


California Summer

by HadenXCharm



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Coming Out, Established Relationship, Firefighter Kagami Taiga, Friendship, Happy Ending, Homophobic Themes, M/M, Mundane, Police Officer Aomine Daiki, Post-Canon, Post-High School, Romance, Sad, Secret Relationship, Slice of Life, dog attack, sad gay boys, versatile couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-07-04 07:54:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 47,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15837009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HadenXCharm/pseuds/HadenXCharm
Summary: There's no better time to be in love like Tokyo in the spring. That's what they say."Kagami, let's go back to L.A."The mundane adventures of Aomine Daiki patrolling his beat as a junior officer, come to you from your local police box.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be a oneshot, but when i was drafting it, it grew into something six times as big, as usual. So here, I will write a full-fledged knb fic on my first try — please treat me kindly.

Aomine Daiki works in a local police box.

This wasn’t supposed to be his fucking life, okay? But not everybody makes it.

It’s not how he’d expected things to turn out, but he’s not too cut up over it. He doesn’t really think too hard about his circumstances or his future beyond the passing reassurance, _‘It won’t always be like this.’_

Anyways, it’s not so bad. He’s working his way up to becoming a criminal investigator, or an assistant commissioner maybe — but for now, Aomine Daiki is a junior officer. _Junsa,_ they call it, the starting rank for a local policeman. Basically, he’s a grunt. Who could’ve seen that one coming when he was making his formless shots.

After finishing at the academy, he was posted for duty in the police box he works in now, and he goes there each day for work. To be honest, it’s a little boring, but that’s only because he’d gotten unrealistic expectations from cop movies. It could have something to do with how new to the job he is too, because he hasn’t been given any interesting duties yet — but even so.  
  


His day consists of doing what is essentially community watch.  
  


He stands out front and surveys the foot-traffic. When he’s on desk-duty, he accepts crime reports and documents them. He handles lost articles, and he gives directions. He supervises lost children, and helps citizens in trouble.

And when it’s his turn, he’s sent out for patrol — _on foot,_ because he doesn’t get keys to the squad car. He’s going to get a police-bike soon, which shouldn’t be as exciting as it is, but there you go. He’ll be able to cruise around the neighbourhood.

Besides the motorcycle, he has a radio and a nice badge, and a navy vest that has the word ‘police’ on the back. He’d also received a firearm, which could be considered the one exciting part of his job, but that gun is never used of course. Even when he’s on duty, he doesn’t go armed. He’d probably only be made to carry it in case of an alien invasion, and very likely not even then.

It makes sense. They’re in the city, and firing a gun could result in a bystander being harmed. During his training, he was taught to hold off on drawing even during an active shooting or bomb threats, first exhausting the sometimes more tiresome, but ultimately more beneficial non-violent methods.

When duty is over, all the service weapons are locked up at the station before going home. During the day, they’re kept in their case. Aomine prefers it this way. He doesn’t like holding the gun. Kinda’ spooky, y’know?

Instead, he and his fellow students had gone through rigorous training in using martial arts and non-deadly force. He’s not excellent, his real talent will always be basketball, but he’s passable at it. He’s practicing that head-lock so he can use it on Tetsu next time he jabs him in the gut, sneaky bastard.

A majority of the skills he was taught at the academy were precautionary, for extreme _what-if_ situations that were never going to happen, so he didn’t need them for patrolling his beat, day to day.  
  


All of which means Aomine Daiki is a neighbourhood watchman. He’s never even made an arrest.  
  


Really, it’s not so bad. It isn’t strenuous work, and the people he works with are pretty okay. Most of the time this day job thing is pretty alright. He can be kind of a lazy slob, so he liked having a job that didn’t require a great amount of effort.

He likes an easy life.

He goes to work, walks around outside, then goes back to sit in the police box and eat his homemade lunch. He supervises kids going to school and he helps the elderly of the neighbourhood, and then he closes up for the night. He heads out, stops at the conbini to stand there in the back and read some magazines — then he picks up a snack and goes home for the evening.

It’s an alright routine, if he’s got to live one of those lives that runs on a routine.

 _‘It won’t always be like this,’_ he thinks. The most he’s able to do at this point is question suspicious persons and protect drunk citizens, maybe rescue kids from strangers — and call his superiors over the radio if there ever is an actual _incident_ of any kind.

This is where he’s ended up. Aomine Daiki is a junior officer in a local police box. He gets up at the same time every day, wears his uniform, and takes the bus. He walks the same path back and forth, looking for anything amiss, and whiles away the work-hours.  
  


   And then, when he’s done with his beat, he goes home to his lover.


	2. Chapter 2

  You wouldn’t know it, but Aomine is in love.

He has a wonderful boyfriend. They bicker and nag each other. They play basketball together. They eat dinner together. They kiss each other, they have sex, and they sleep side by side. His name’s Kagami, and he and Aomine live together. Life is good.

They met in high school. It felt like such a long time ago when he thought about it now. One of those things that warms your heart but still makes you sad.

Ever since he was a kid, Aomine has played basketball. It was the thing he loved most to do, the thing he threw his heart into. He’d been good enough that he’d joined the team in middle school — but then, something had happened.

He’d played so much, and with such zeal, that he started to get good — _really good._ So good in fact, that even the older kids were getting easier to beat. It went on this way until at last, Daiki kept winning.

_And winning. And winning. And winning.  
_

He won so much that it got to the point where he _couldn’t_ lose anymore. It was this gradual thing that grew in the shadows and then suddenly loomed in his path. He was discouraged, because basketball stopped being as fun. The thing he loved most, it was so hard to find enjoyment in it, but he trudged on. He thought that if he just kept going, eventually someone would turn up, an opponent who could stand on the court with him.

Except while he waited, something even worse happened. The people he played with, they started to give up. They didn’t want to play with him anymore. They’d realized he was too far ahead, and had decided there wasn’t any point in trying to beat him — _give up, give up, give up—_

Even Tetsu, his best friend, he gave up too. There’s no way to describe that pain, the _bitterness_ he’d felt, because that’s when Aomine had realized that they were right. There _was_ no point. That’s when he’d given up too, on finding a rival — on basketball.

   
  Because, _‘the only one who can beat me is me.’_

  
He’d had to watch the thing he loved most turn to poison before his eyes. He’d started to hate basketball.

Those had been some dark years. But then of course, Tetsu found his new light, a returnee come back from America — and Aomine had met Kagami.

It’s not like it was love at first sight or anything, because of course Kagami didn’t beat him right off the bat. In fact, Aomine had sort of resented him for a while. Looking back he feels like a total fool that he hadn’t recognized Kagami at once, the one he’d searched for — because it seemed so obvious after the fact.

That loss, when Kagami had finally beaten him, the loss hurt, but it was cathartic, like a pain that had been dulled by novocaine for so long finally piercing through. It was like waking up, bursting out of the ocean. Everything came into focus.

For a moment, it's devastating, because just as he found that person, they're gone again, because why should Kagami want to face him again after defeating him? But there's that light Tetsu talked about—

Because Kagami loved basketball just as much as Aomine had used to.

Some part of him had expected Kagami to lose interest after beating him the once, but Kagami didn’t disappoint. He kept playing basketball with Aomine — he didn’t even care if Aomine beat him afterwards on the street court a hundred times, didn’t care if he never won against him again. He didn’t get bored, always made him work for it, and for the first time in ages, Aomine remembered what it was like to enjoy playing.

The thing he loved most in the world, it was back within his reach. Kagami made it exhilarating to shoot a basket, made him fight for every point. It was suddenly fun again to show off his best tricks, it was fun to impress him with his craziest shots, it was fun to run around outside on the court and shove each other around trying to swipe the ball. Kagami took it seriously, he got intense, drove Aomine to the zone, made his heart race and made him strive and _struggle_ to win—  He made Aomine _love_ basketball again.

   And at some point, Aomine had started to love him too.

Then Kagami had decided to go back to the states. He headed back there to complete high school and be trained so he could go pro. Aomine had immediately thrown himself into begging his parents to go overseas too.

He spent a year like that, impatient and frustrated, because by then he knew who Kagami was. By then he’d realized he was the one, the opponent he’s waited for, and he’d slipped through his grasp — but once high school was finished, Aomine followed him. He’d enrolled for his freshman year of college over in California, and then made the flight to America.

It was scary, leaving behind his friends, his parents, his country — but he was determined. He knew where he was going. He knew where he was headed, and he had to get there.

It didn’t really hit him, how far he was from home, it didn't hit him that he'd left everything he knew behind until he came off the plane and put his feet on the ground in LAX. From the very first sight, it’s nothing like Japan. A sea of black hair is replaced with blonde and brown. The men are tall. Everyone’s tan and beautiful and ready for the beach. Most people are dressed casually, even the adults. The mostly homogenous crowd in the Tokyo airport, the crowd of familiar faces he’s lived with his whole life, it suddenly feels like the entire world has spilled in — _is this what America’s like?_

He moves to the side of the gate and stands there. He scans the crowd, and there’s a moment of helplessness. He’d told Kagami that he was coming to America. Tetsu had told Kagami the date he was flying over — but he doesn’t see him, can’t pick him out of the crowd. He doesn’t stand out like he had at home; a tall brunette. In America, his features aren’t special.

It’s not like he’d asked him to meet him or anything, but somehow, he’d expected him to be there to pick him up.

He doesn’t know where to go on his own. He couldn’t understand what anybody was saying, could barely read a single thing, and there’s a long moment where he doesn’t know what to do next, where he suddenly feels like a kid who’s leapt into the pool without water-wings and promptly panics when they sink.  


But Kagami showed up. He was waiting there at Aomine’s gate, and approached when Aomine failed to spot him.  


The second he did, all the people rushing back and forth with their suitcases, the families with kids in tow, the endless buzz of English jabber going in one ear and out the other, all of it fades into the background — and Kagami is crystal clear, him and every one of his teeth and every crease around his eyes as he grins in greeting. Aomine’s heart is alive, jerking like a dribbling ball.

Kagami showed. He’s standing there dressed like an American, hanging around with the others who’d waited for the flight to land so they could embrace their loved ones. He’d come to get him. Come to take him home.

“Hey, you basketball-idiot,” he greeted. “I can’t believe you really did it.” He sounded as excited to see him as Aomine felt.

“Hope you’re ready to get your ass kicked,” Aomine had gotten out, but his heart was pounding so hard that he was too winded to say much else.

Kagami laughed, and it’s all worth it in an instant.

Grabbed his suitcases from the baggage reclaim. Caught a taxi. Settled in Kagami’s apartment for the week before term starts — _worth it, worth it, worth it—_

Back home, each time anyone had questioned his decision to go, his blunt explanation of his intentions was, _‘To be in the NBA.’_ They all got the same answer, Kise, Mom and Dad, Satsuki— and he could lie all he wanted and say that’s all it was, _the NBA,_ but that’s the truth right there. Standing in the airport and staring back at the face he’d missed so much. That’s the truth of it, the reason he’d come here — it’s because the person he wanted to play against the most wasn’t in Japan anymore.

   So why stay in Japan.

 

Aomine had followed Kagami to America, and they were always together after that. They’d gone to rival schools and played two seasons in college basketball there — the Bruins and the Trojans. In the meantime they’d roomed together on Kagami’s suggestion. _‘You’re always bumming around in my house anyways, so you might as well move in.’_  
  
Some time after that, Aomine had come to realize that this feeling he had was alive and fluttering in Kagami’s heart too — and they’d started to be together. Started to kiss each other. Sleep in Kagami’s room. Tell each other the truth of their feelings under cover of night, when it was too dark to blush. They’d started to love each other with the same intensity that they loved basketball with.

Near the close of their second summer in America, Aomine’s mom had gotten very sick. They’d ended up quitting school and coming home. She was better now, but her recovery had taken long enough that they’d both settled down and found jobs here in Japan by that time. Aomine went through the police academy, Kagami got his fire-safety training, and both of them had pitched in to lease their apartment.

And life had just gone on that way. There’d always been this vague idea in Aomine’s head, _‘We’ll go back, we’ll train back up, and we’ll get recruited. It can still happen.’_

It’s this thing he needs to hold onto, something he can’t think too hard about, because if he does, he’ll have to face how far off that idea really is.

_‘... It was our dream to go pro.’  
_

But life changes. Things don’t always go the way you think they will. You don’t always get what you want. Satsuki’s always telling him to be grateful for what he has. He and Kagami had both gotten jobs here, his mom’s doing better, they’d gotten in contact with their old friends, and they have a place together. It’s enough for now.

That’s just the way things are. They go to work and they get through each week, one after the other, and he doesn’t turn back. Doesn’t look back on his past, because it will only bring regret.

Aomine likes his job most days. It’s easy. He likes a life that’s easy.

But sometimes, a shadow of what he’d felt in middle-school creeps in, a whisper of that heavy dark feeling. It can’t be compared to that hollow emptiness, the loneliness, the way he’d _starved_ for someone to play with, the way he’d ached and become bitter from losing the thing he loved most. Honestly, he’s just kind of bored, because he misses those days.

Struggling through school and playing basketball every day. He'd really liked it, actually, being on the USC team. His teammates hadn't cared that he couldn't really speak enough English to be able to talk to them much, they were friendly Americans who cared more about having a good time and how well he shot a hoop— they were startlingly similar to Kagami, easy to like.

It's funny actually, they'd traded colors during school, red USC and blue UCLA. It was a blast, building up to their rivalry games, competing for the Victory Bell. One of the best parts was fucking with their teammates, facing off viciously on the court, but they talked smack during halftime, and they hung out after the games like best buds — _Dude, you didn't say you knew UCLA's power forward?! What the fuck, do all you international students know each other?_ — 

He and Kagami chattered away in Japanese and annoyed everyone, they bumped fists after games, they shared water bottles and towels and shit, and they fucking _slayed_  on the court— He'd lived on the other side of the world but Aomine hadn't felt homesick for a second.  


Those were the best years of his life.  


It's hard not to feel flat afterwards, and it gets to be a real drag, day after day. His job isn’t exciting. There’s no winning and losing involved, and next to no personal risk.

Kagami’s the one with the interesting job. He’s a firefighter at the base rank, and he gets to do all sorts of cool stuff. Fire units are called in for lots of different shit, so Kagami gets a pretty good variety. He mostly does medical and rescue runs, or even hazard eliminations. Fire runs are actually the most rare. Since starting his job, he’s rescued workers from construction sites that have had accidents, helped at the scenes of car wrecks, and he’s been sent to examine gas leaks and collapsed buildings. He’s retrieved trapped animals, has administered first aid in emergencies, and has rescued teens who’ve overdosed. Kagami thrives on the action.

Aomine’s police box is in the same district that Kagami’s fire unit is in, so occasionally, they’re on the job together. It’s always during some kind of disaster, so it’s not right for him to be excited about it, but it’s nice to see Kagami during the day, to see him on the job. The fireman outfit suits him — the orange fire-jumpsuit with the yellow reflective stripes. The silver helmet.

Sometimes he thinks Kagami should’ve been a cop like him, because every time Aomine’s seen Kagami deal with people after a disaster — people living through what is the worst day of their lives, _their home has caught fire, their cat is stuck in the drain pipe, their child is trapped in a collapsed home_ — every time he’s helping others, Kagami is so warm, so caring. He’s much better at keeping scared citizens calm than Aomine is.

Even so, he thinks they’d both prefer basketball — NBA in America.

Maybe if they’d been there just a couple months more, they would’ve been snatched up onto a professional team. That’s what they’d always planned on, trying out for the Chicago Bulls and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

But life doesn’t always go how you plan. Sometimes you fall short of your dreams and you end up moving back home and living in an apartment with a guy you met in high school — and that’s really the only thing that keeps Aomine content with second best. Because the thing he’d gone to America for has come home with him again.

  
At least at the end of the day, they have each other.

  
It didn’t seem likely, but Kagami's a great boyfriend. He lets Aomine do as he pleases and doesn’t want anything in return besides a kiss goodnight and the occasional basketball game. He’s big and warm, he’s fun to tease, he’s loyal, kind-hearted, handsome, and he’s got this burning fiery passion about everything he does. In any other situation, all that would make him the ideal guy to fall in love with — the perfect kind of boy to bring home to one’s parents.

Aomine is in love. You wouldn’t be able to tell the way he carries on. He’s as lazy and crass and as shamelessly self-absorbed as ever; he isn’t boyfriend material at all. You wouldn’t know he’s got someone like Kagami at home.

He doesn’t mention Kagami to his coworkers, or to anyone who hasn’t met him. He doesn’t doze about like some lovestruck goon, and he doesn’t talk about his home life. To the friends and teammates who do know Kagami and know they’re living together, when they talk, it’s never about their situation. Information is left out, passed over, anything that could give it away is left behind. With his closest friends, the mask is flawless, every word considered before it is spoken, every facial expression and look across the room carefully checked.

You wouldn’t know it, but Aomine’s in love.  
  
Because the thing is, this life they have together, the person who’d changed his heart, the lover Aomine comes home to, no one knows about it.

It’s not out of need for privacy, or simply a desire not to suffer the hassle of telling everyone — it cannot be called a ‘secret’ in the sense that they are avoiding some humiliation the way pre-teens do.  It’s much more serious than that.

Because those coworkers, those friends and teammates, the people who are closest to him, _Tetsu, Satsuki, Mom and Dad —_ he knows what will happen if they were to find out about him, and he's not strong enough to face that. It’s a matter of survival, something that must be kept inside at any cost.

He and Kagami don’t talk about it. They’ve never acknowledged it directly or agreed to keep it quiet, but there is a silent understanding there that this thing they share can never see the light of day — and it takes its toll.

Because they miss out on things. Moments that lovers should be able to share pass by like a ghost. Intimacy, the high of a requited love, nights out, anniversaries, pictures on the walls of a home, milestones that continue to progress — moments that people in love take for granted, things that any couple anywhere can do without thinking, he and Kagami have always gone without.

Most of the time it just feels normal, because this is how it’s always been. They don’t know anything different than what they’ve always had together. Friends and rivals outside the apartment, lovers inside — and no one else knows. It’s the way things are and the way they’ll stay.

But that thing that they always have to hold back, sometimes it even creeps its fingers inbetween them when they _are_ alone, when they should be able to be free with each other. It crawls up his throat, covers his mouth, doesn’t let him speak those words — _‘I love you.’_

It’s too intimate, it’s too honest, just another thing they can’t share like normal people, because what they have, it’s only there when they’re in privacy, something he can only feel when they’re alone together where the world can’t see them — and even when they’re like that, tucked away in their apartment, it’s something they can’t say.

Because tomorrow they have to go outside again.

But it’s there in his thoughts —  _‘I have a boyfriend’  —_ It’s such a big part of his life, takes up so much space in his mind, this thing that is constantly there — _‘I love Kagami.’_

And he can’t tell anyone that.

    They’re words that are forever trapped in his mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

Aomine bummed around the house.

He looks up as he hears Kagami coming home. Aomine’s picking at the leftovers he’d warmed up in the microwave and was eating from the container. He’s watching TV on the sofa by himself.

He looks away once Kagami comes in and hangs up his coat and kicks his shoes off, not wanting to seem too eager to see him back — but of course, his mood immediately improves.

 _‘I was getting bored.’  
_  

“I’m home,” Kagami greets mildly, walking in on sock-feet. From the corner of his eye, Aomine watches his figure move past into the kitchen, tall and broad-shouldered. Kagami turns on the lights as he makes his way down, and then started to unbag some groceries on the counter. Aomine propped his head up on his hand, watching him. It’s a familiar sight, Kagami with his hair brown and glowing as the refrigerator light tries to peek around him.

He’s like that for a while, back turned in front of the fridge, damn-near blocking the whole thing from view as he stooped to rearrange things to his satisfaction, the big idiot.

“Welcome back,” he replied, and looks back to the TV when Kagami finishes and withdraws from the refrigerator, clattering away in the kitchen. If he’d been back at the usual time, he would be sitting with Aomine by this point.

“Late,” he muttered. It annoys him when Kagami’s shifts are messed up.

He’s an underling like Aomine, so his superiors think they can just put him on night duty whenever they want, or send him out on a shift at the firehouse that keeps him away for a week straight, or even drag him to work on the weekend!

Bastards. When are he and Kagami supposed to go to the courts, huh?

When Kagami gets back this late, he’s usually tired out and isn’t up to doing much other than showering, eating, and going to sleep. They can’t spend the evening together the way Aomine likes — Kagami cooking dinner and doing housework, watching TV while they eat, taking a bath together, and then having sex before bed.

Instead, Aomine sits alone and waits up.

“Fire tonight,” Kagami explained, having heard his griping over the sound of putting some leftovers into the oven to warm.

Once he shuts the door and sets the heat with the buttons on the stovetop, Kagami stretches his arms over his head, hands easily touching the ceiling. Aomine can smell it from here — _smoke,_ thick and pungent.

He doesn’t say anything, but he’s staring at him, because an actual fire is rare. “It went great. Everyone got out,” Kagami reported on his own, not making Aomine ask. He let his arms down and turned, leaning his elbows on the counter. The top of his head glows under the kitchen lights, his red-brown hair shining as he grinned tiredly.

His face shows that same elation that one feels after a long game of basketball or a night of sex, the endorphins released by strenuous exercise settling one’s exhausted body into a warm weak haze — the kind of high that Aomine never got from his own job. He likes to think that he will if he becomes a criminal investigator, once he gets that excitement into his life again.

“No injuries. The home was hardly damaged at all.” Kagami moves into the hallway and stretches his arms across his front with a little groan of satisfaction, squeezing his shoulders.

Aomine stares at the TV. Kagami smells that strongly of smoke because he’d gone in to do a rescue. He prefers not to think about the times when Kagami does fire-runs and presumably has to go into burning buildings, buildings that may collapse. He could be crushed, could be burnt, could get poisoned from smoke inhalation, could pass out in there from the heat and the fumes and not come back out. Aomine prefers to imagine Kagami stands outside by the truck and aims the hose — as badly as he aims at the toilet.  
  


“Go shower, you smell like ass,” he says.  
  


Kagami yawns and walks off to shower with no further comment and Aomine watches TV as he wanders in and out of the rooms in the hall once he’s cleaned up — bathroom to bedroom so he can get dressed, bedroom to kitchen so he can check on his food, kitchen to hall-closet so he can do some cleaning while he waits.

Aomine closes his eyes, head on the backboard. He’s jostled slightly when Kagami squashes the cushions as he sits down next to him and sets his plate on the coffee-table. He cracks an eye open. Kagami’s stuffing his face as usual.

“How was your beat?”

“Boring.” Aomine put an arm up over his eyes, settling lower on the couch, legs splayed out in front of him. He’s thrown around a little each time Kagami leans forward over his plate for another bite, gently shaking the couch. They’re too goddamn big for this thing.

“Returned a lost purse. Gave foreigners directions. The usual.”

“Hmmm,” he noted, cheeks crammed to capacity. Even when he’s this tired out, he still has the energy to eat with that much zeal. Aomine feels exhausted watching.

“I’m gonna’ work my way up,” he says. “You’ll see. One day I’m gonna’ be a criminal investigator. Best in Tokyo.”

“Not ‘best in Japan?’” Kagami teases when he comes up for air. Aomine doesn’t bother kicking him.

“Jackass.”

“I’m working on fire lieutenant.” Kagami stops to take another gulp. “Y’know. Another stripe for my badge.”

Aomine picks his arm up and gives him a look. “You get any benefits with your rank?”

“Not really.” He shrugs. Aomine huffs and throws his arms on the back of the couch. Typical.

“I don’t really care. I don’t want an administrative post until I’m too old and stiff to do rescues,” Kagami notes.

“When you’re old, you won’t be stiff,” Aomine drawls.

“Fuck you.”

“You won’t be able to fuck me either, come to think of it.”

“Whatever Aomine,” Kagami groans, “I like my job, so I don’t care about the tiered-work system and having underlings like you cops do.”

 _‘I’m an underling, so of course I care about the tiered-system,’_ Aomine thinks bitterly, eye twitching.

“As long as I’m helping people,” he says in his usual voice, mellow and careless, but he’s as soft-hearted as ever.  
  


Aomine snorts.  
  


When they get into bed, Kagami spreads out and takes off his shirt. Aomine lays down next to him on his side, head resting on his arm as he watches him yawn and shift about until he’s comfortable.

Once he is, he leans over and gives Aomine a goodnight kiss. After a second, he sighs and hums onto his mouth a little like he always does.

Aomine kisses him back, eyes closed, and feels him up a little, jokingly squeezing and cupping his chest, big enough that it’s cushiony and moldable. He presses his dick against Kagami’s, trying to coax him for a little attention — Kagami hugs him.

It’s a sweet heartfelt squeeze. He’s clearly worn out but Aomine keeps it up, mouthing at Kagami’s neck and dragging his hands over his back, his hips, his ass, until Kagami gives a lazy hum of a laugh and a contented sigh and puts his hand in Aomine’s sweatpants. No matter how exhausted he is at the end of the day, he’s still got some energy left to love Aomine with. Never too tired to pay him some attention. Never too tired to deal with him. Never too tired to fool around a little.

Never turns away, never gives up, never grows bored, that’s Kagami for you. _The one he’s looked for._ At his side, all the time. Rival, partner — his lover.  
  


_‘Aren’t you the best, Kagami?’_

 

“You should get some rest, fuckhead.” Aomine keeps kissing his lips even as they move to speak. He squeezes Kagami on the butt with enthusiasm, coaxing another tired laugh. “You’ve got an early day,” Kagami breathes, but doesn’t do a thing to stop him doing as he likes.

“That’s my line,” Aomine counters, gently biting Kagami on the chin, dragging his teeth and licking under his jaw to try and get him in the mood. “I’ll do the work. Just try not to yawn or I'll get hurt feelings.”

Kagami’s laughing. His eyes are so warm like that, when they’re in bed together. The light is off but that fond smile stretching his face is a beautiful glow in his heart. “What are you, a baby?”

“No,” Aomine breathes, gripping Kagami's cock through his sweats, heavy and hot against his palm. Kagami flashes his teeth, hand curling into Aomine’s hair as he rolls a little closer.

“Is there anything else in your head,” he jokes, and laughs a little when Aomine gives the obligatory mumble of _basketball—_  

“Basketball idiot,” he complains, but he’s far too affectionate, too soft, so Aomine kisses him hard, seals their mouths firmly and squeezes his dick.

“Pff,” Aomine scoffs when Kagami pretends to be pass out during a kiss. He can’t keep it up, he breaks too easily, cracking a smile when he’s trying to fake sleep. “Show some enthusiasm, tuna-boy,” Aomine complains when Kagami continues to lay there as he tugs and massages his dick, not reacting other than providing a very unconvincing snore.

“Who’s a tuna,” Kagami whispers softly, and Aomine can’t help his grin. They snake their bodies together. Aomine is hot and excited, and pleasures them enthusiastically. Kagami enjoys the attention, unhurried. His breath is slow and relaxed as Aomine fondles him.

“C’mere.”

Kagami lets his eyes fall shut and kisses back lazily when Aomine takes his face in his hand and smushes it, directing his mouth to his own. “Hmmm,” he sighs as they jack off together before bed.

“Whooo,” Aomine exhaled when they finished, throwing the covers down. He takes off his shirt and gets up for a towel, wandering out into the hallway. He wipes his forehead, wets his hair, and cleans himself up at the sink.

When he comes back, Kagami's lying there on his back, head to the side, tipped down towards his shoulder. The light from the bathroom shines in and hits the top of his hair, his nose and chin, and illuminates his bare chest, lifting slowly as he breathes.

The sheets are pushed down and he’s laying exposed, his belly going up and down, the cum glistening in the light from the bathroom. He looks so soft like that, he’s beautiful. He’s fast asleep with his dick out and he looks like an angel.

Aomine can’t stop looking at him. He stays there in the doorway because that quiet moment imprisons him, that glow steals his breath.

In the end, once the sight of him like that is burned into his brain, an image he will never forget, he turns out the light. He wipes Kagami down and pulls up his pants. He lays down next to him, lets his eyes drift open and closed, following the soft line of Kagami’s cheek, the peaceful swell and dip of his chest.

  
Yeah.  
  


It’s not what he’d wanted in high school. They didn’t go to the NBA, but you don’t always get what you want.

   For now, life is good.


	4. Chapter 4

  Aomine has homemade lunches.

 

Police culture in Japan is quite something. It’s all about service, and police are very diligent and dedicated in dealing with the community they’re posted in, keeping the ideals of their organization in mind: protect the populace, serve the community, strength through persistence and friendliness. As Aomine has been on the job, he has seen fellow officers dealing with drunks in public, treating them with the patience and care they would show their own friends.

The crime rate is so low that instead, they survey each other for corruption, trying to weed out those officers involved with the mob, or those who ‘make-work’ by planting evidence or being unreasonably picky about traffic violations, or those who turn their eyes away in the face of sex-crimes.

Aomine hasn’t personally seen or been involved in anything of that sort, but he knows it’s out there. It’s something they’re all cognizant of. While he’s been at his post, he’s been ordered to report anything out of the ordinary from his coworkers. He hasn’t been sent to harrass or question cyclists, and he has seen his superiors properly scold and detain train-gropers, so his mind is at ease.

However, amongst themselves, when they are not dealing with the public, there is the typical workplace hierarchy. He and fellow officers mess with each other, and they are harangued and taken advantage of by their superiors, sent to do troublesome errands and grunt work the same way upperclassmen would do to first years back in school. Being teased is something Aomine is still getting used to, because he can’t talk back as he would if he were off the job. He doesn’t want a reprimand, after all.

To be honest, he’s not very personable. His friends are always telling him that he gets on people’s last nerves with his attitude, but what can he say — he’s a guy who doesn’t have much going for him personality-wise. It’s what you sign up for with hanging around someone so lazy, aloof, and careless. On top of it, he can be lewd and pretty short-tempered, and even though he tries to keep it professional at work, his coworkers seem to have gotten the measure of the type of guy he is, because they tease him about his poor social skills a lot, considering he has to put on a good face for the citizens he helps. From an outsider’s perspective, it’s probably hilariously awkward. Kagami says it is, at least.

Besides that, he’s pestered _a lot_ on a certain subject.  


Aomine has homemade lunches.  


Aomine has a boyfriend. He is in love. You wouldn’t know it from the way he behaves. Others couldn’t tell the truth of his circumstances, but they do start to wonder.

Because he’s hard to deal with, but he’s handsome enough to make up for those shortcomings, meaning it’s reasonable to assume that he’d still be able find someone despite those flaws. Besides that, he’s clearly a guy with no home-ec skills, a guy who shouldn’t be able to take care of himself without someone else there for him to mooch off of — so they’ve fixed upon the idea that Aomine has someone at home that they don’t know about, and in a way, they’re right.

They just think it’s a sweet girlfriend being taken for granted.

“Still not married, Aomine-san,” Ikeda, one of the senior police, comments during their break. Aomine looks at his hand mildly — bare fingers, no wedding ring. He stuffs his cheeks, arm around his lunch.

“Lunches from home, how can you think twice about it!” he laughs, checking Aomine in the shoulder, and oh great, some of the other guys are getting interested again  


_‘Piss off,’_ he almost says.  


“You’ve got freshly laundered clothes and a pre-packed lunch, and you’re never late to work—” They totally have him pinned as a guy who can’t do dick to take care of himself, and since they know he doesn’t live with his parents, they’ve guessed that he must have someone. Who is caring for Aomine Daiki?

“I bet she even washes your underwear, and you treat her this coldly?”

“That’s it,” he grumbles, because the last comment came from a guy who was the same rank as him. “I’ve had enough from you, Kimura. Like hell I care if some girl washes my underwear or not. Why does she have to be a wife if she’ll do it as a girlfriend?”

“So heartless!”

“That’s what they say,” he muttered and smugly took another bite, smirking a little when they groan in envy.

“Don’t be so shameless about it. You’re at that age where you should settle down. If you like her enough to move in with her and let her feed you, why don't you just marry her already? Have you even met her parents?”

“Mind your own business.”

“If you’d stop bragging about your goddamn love-lunch, then we would!” He gives a nondescript mumble and ignores them from that point.

  
So yeah, his coworkers all say that he fits the archetype of a newly-married man who is content to be spoiled by his wife. Aomine doesn’t know what that even means.

 _‘You old guys just talk nonsense, don’t you.’_  


He retreats to the break-room and sits next to another junior officer, Kouji, a guy he can actually stand. He gripes, “Why are they interested in everyone else’s business.” The guy laughs and Aomine remembers that he does in fact have a doting wife and a baby son. He's always talking about them and showing pictures and walks around like he's on springs. It’s only bearable because it means he’s always in a good mood.  


He isn’t like this guy, huh?  


“You know, Aomine-san, they’re teasing, but they’re right. Who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?”

“That’s what my friends always say,” he grumbles, but doesn’t snap, because Kouji’s not as annoying about it. “And don’t even start telling me to just propose already. There’s no girl.” He thinks of Kagami and his stupid biceps and it almost makes him laugh. _Fuck no,_ there’s no girl.

“Well, you’re not a bad guy, Aomine-san,” Kouji notes. “It wouldn’t be hard for you to meet a nice girl. Don’t you think you should try to find someone?”  
  
“Hmm. Sounds like too much work.”

“Maybe, but relationships take work. That doesn't mean it's not worth it,” he continues. Aomine shrugs.

“Having a wife is fun.”

To be honest, in middle school, even a little into high school, when he’d imagined the future, that’d been it — a vague idea of a girl, one who’d put up with him, pretty, not too tall, without an annoying voice. Someone he didn’t have to spend a lot of effort on. As long as she’d feed him dinner and keep it wet for him when he comes home from work — and with some real jugs on her. That’s his idea of a wife.  


But things don’t always go the way you plan. Wife, huh.  


“Not interested.”  


Aomine goes home with the same bounce in his step.  


Despite his insistence that he doesn’t have a girl at home waiting on a proposal, Aomine is no stranger to partnered life — the doting wife thing isn’t that far from the mark, really.

Not that anyone knows about it. To everyone else in the world, Aomine is single, but when he’s at home, he does have a boyfriend — a loving boyfriend who nags him but still ends up spoiling him anyways. A tall brunette, handsome face, deep voice, and he’s fucking _stacked_ — that’s Kagami. A loudmouth who’s as sweet as a peach and with a body shaped by the gods. What do those guys know.

Aomine’s content with his homelife as it is.

As things stand he already looks forward to coming home at the end of each day. Why wouldn’t he? He takes it as granted most of the time, but when he thinks about it, he’s very well taken care of.

In the evenings when they’re together, if Kagami’s on his normal shifts, they both get home around the same time. Kagami does the housework. He draws Aomine’s bath. He even sets out his folded clothes. He does their laundry — _he does wash his underwear, for fucksake —_ he cooks his dinner, he makes love with—  


_Fuck, don’t call it that, it's_  sex—and wait a minute, hang on! Kagami’s not really a wife!  


Aomine thinks of the apron and slippers Kagami wears when he cooks and does the housework, and finds a fleeting comparison. Fuck. Whatever.

“Take your coffee,” Kagami said bluntly. “You look dead.”  


Aomine realizes he’s been staring dazedly across the table for some time. That’s right. It’s a new day.

He yawns and rubs his hair, still damp from a shower. He looks up at Kagami, who’d come out of the kitchen to greet him. Face freshly washed, teeth brushed, hair combed, Kagami’s in a t-shirt and sports-pants, and he’s holding out a basketball-print mug to Aomine with the words _‘dunk it’_ on the side.

It’s a new day and Kagami makes him a big breakfast, American-style with lots of bacon and eggs and bread, pancakes with syrup, fruit juice — he piles up his plate for him and eats with him, and then sees Aomine off to work.

Before he opens the door to leave, Kagami kisses him.

“I’ll see you tonight. Here, don’t forget this.”

He sends him off with a tupperware, and Aomine walks to the subway awake and in a good mood. Content to be spoiled, huh? Yeah maybe.

When he’s in the train, Aomine peels open the lid on his bento a little and peeks in. Kagami always crams it to bursting with the things he likes. _‘Mm, looks tasty.’_

Sometimes they walk together and separate at the subway, or when Kagami’s on a weird shift, he’ll leave pre-made boxes in the fridge for him to take with him — so one way or another, Aomine gets fed.

 _‘If I left you on your own, I’d find you dead in the hallway, arm stretched out towards the kitchen,’_ Kagami had joked once. Aomine doesn’t say shit, because who’s fucking complaining about getting Kagami’s homemade meals.

Aomine bums through the morning, loitering outside and enjoying the spring breeze, and watches people commute to work and children head to school. At noon, he cracks open his lunch.

Fuck yes. The corner compartment on the backside of the bentou had those little sausages cut into squid shapes. He hummed appreciatively and dug his chopsticks in.

“Look at that,” his coworkers mumble and moan as they come back from the local shops with meat buns or cucumber sandwiches or packaged rice balls.

“You and your love-lunch, kid!” the supervising officer notes, because Ikeda is the fatherly type. Aomine unconcernedly shoves his face with rice.  


“I hope you bring home some damn flowers every once in a while!” Fucking Kimura.

“Like I’d get flowers!” he barks.  


A moment later, he felt something close his throat, because when he’d said it, he hadn’t meant it, not really. It was a reflex the way he told Momoi she was annoying and that he didn’t want to shop with her even though he _does,_ the same way he picks on Tetsu meaninglessly despite being his best friend.

But when the words leave his mouth, it occurs to him that it’s true. He really can’t do that — buy Kagami flowers. Because this thing they have, it only exists when they’re alone together in their apartment.

Kagami dotes on him. He feeds him and gets in the bath with him and has sex with him, _kisses him—_ but it’s only when they’re at home.

Aomine is spoilt into absolute bliss, he’s very much _loved,_ he’s got a good life, and Kagami’s content to do all of that for him without seeking praise or thanks. He doesn’t even care if Aomine is openly appreciative or not, just as long as he doesn’t _complain._

Taking Kagami on a date, kissing him after basketball, buying flowers, _any_ of the ways he could express the way he feels, could show gratitude for being so well taken care of all the time, reciprocate Kagami’s affection, it’s impossible.

Buying flowers. It’s one of the many things he can’t do for Kagami. Things he doesn’t realize he’s missing out on that would be a normal part of life if he were in any other relationship. Things that don’t even cross his mind to do because if he did dwell on it, it would only cause him pain.  


He keeps eating.  


When the workday is done, Aomine goes home. A husband might stop at the grocery store to save his wife the trip. He might bring her home something nice. He might hurry back to see her.

As it is, Aomine gets off the train and stops in the corner store. He stands in the back and reads lewd magazines for twenty minutes. He picks up sports drinks and a pack of condoms.

He can’t get Kagami flowers. But that weekend when they go out to play basketball, Aomine insists they play at the court across town, the one they never go to because there’s a couple that are closer to their apartment.  


The plum trees overhanging the picnic area across the street are in bloom. They play and they play, and go sit in the shade once they’re exhausted.

They come to rest in the grass. Aomine sets his forearms on his knees and takes a drink. Kagami lies on his back and pants, forehead damp with sweat. His eyes are shut and his shirt sticks to his body. The sun dapples him from head to toe, gold and green.  


The blossoms above them drift down. They fall into Kagami’s hair, and Aomine turns his face away.


	5. Chapter 5

If anything interesting happens in Aomine’s area of patrol, it’s almost always in the local park.  
  


He doesn’t know if he should just be grateful that it’s so peaceful even in the city, or if it’s just because he’s still so green at the job, but he’s never dealt with a violent incident, and most of the people he works with haven’t either, despite having been policemen for longer.

Even so, sometimes he’ll be called to check on a homeless person resting in the park, a rare sight that only exists in the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka. Other interesting tasks include being sent to intercept persons who are drunk in public and are wandering around, and to guide them away from any traffic and keep them from interacting with others as he takes them back to the police box. He’s also sent to investigate if there are reports of someone suspicious near the subway or in the park.

“Packed lunch again?” Aomine almost groans aloud. “This one's a keeper. When are you going to marry this girl?”

“Like hell,” he mutters.

The seasoning Kagami put on his rice today is clearly in the shape of a dick. He’d laughed out loud in the train when he’d checked it and seen that morning. But that’s just another reason they’re not grown up enough to be married.

  
“I’m too young to have a wife,” he brushes off. “I’m going on my lunch break.”

  
If he’s sent out on his beat at noon, Aomine likes to go to the park to eat his lunch on nice days. He sits at a picnic table and takes off his hat, setting it down next to him as he eats. He sends Kagami a picture of him eating the dick rice and gets back a bunch of thumbs-up emojis.

He finishes up, stretches, and looks out across the yard, the well-kept grass and flower beds, the distant bridges and paths overlooking the pond. After screwing around on his phone and enjoying the outdoors for a time, he picks up his stuff and starts to walk back, circling the pond.

It’s a fish pond with some pretty massive carp, so naturally, some splashing catches his eye. There’s people feeding them in the distance, and as the fish surface, they create a disturbance — but this is near the shore, among the reeds and lilypads.

As he strolls, he hears gulping and gasping, and when he glances over again, he hones in on something out of place — a dark little head. A second later he breaks into a dead-run, sprinting right up to the edge of the pond, plowing straight into the water.

He snatches him up under the arms, the momentum sending the kid swinging up above the surface. He almost tows himself down face-first trying to come to a complete stop that quickly, but he manages to balance there, soaked up to his hips, probably just barely having kept from drowning his phone and radio.  
  


_‘I’ve got him — I’ve got him!’  
_

He stands there and pants, feet sinking into the mud, he’s totally ruined his work pants, and shit, this water’s chilly. He’s shaking with adrenaline, holding the kid up and looking into his face as he chokes, water spewing out of his little mouth and nose. Aomine’s shellshocked, and doesn’t think to shake him or pat him on the back, just stares and pants, holding him up, but the kid finally gasps after heaving for several long seconds — and on that first gasp, he begins to sob and cough.

He finally snaps out of it, the instinct-driven panic that had sent him bolting over here fizzling out, and fuck, he doesn’t know what to do now, because he’s just standing in the fucking pond holding a kid who’s bawling his eyes out.

“Okay, okay,” he tries, voice unsteady as he pulls the kid to his shoulder with one arm, using the other to balance. He pats the kid’s back, holding him to his hip, keeping him above the water. "I gotcha'... I got you, little guy—”

He pants, heart racing. He hadn’t expected to feel like this. He hasn’t had a moment like this before, and it was kind of scary, this feeling. Geez, what a rush! Shit, the kid almost drowned! If he’d been a minute later, it would’ve been to find him floating face-down.

He’s a cop. He’s supposed to keep calm in situations like this — but it still takes him a while to pull himself together and make to get out of the water.

Concerned citizens start to make their way over to help him, thank goodness, and Aomine hands the kid out to one of them while he wades his way out. “Here, sit him down right here,” he instructs once he’s back in the grass, and stands next to the pitiful wet kid as he howls and chokes on his snot, inconsolable after scaring himself that badly. A nice lady is cooing and patting the kid’s back, but he won’t stop crying.

Aomine stays next to him, beginning to calm down and think of what he was supposed to do next. “Any parents around?” he tries, but after the next few minutes, despite having attracted a lot of attention, no one comes to claim the boy.

He phones in over the radio, “I’ve got a kid here, two-year old maybe, fell in the pond. He might’ve escaped his home, I haven’t found any parents. I’m bringing him back for collection.”

After receiving a response, it’s time to go. “Hey, come with me, kid,” he says. The boy has since been comforted by the lady, still sniffing and hiccuping. He’s drenched and is clinging to her, wetting her business skirt.

“Go with the nice policeman.” Aomine tries to stop glaring so much. Kagami says that when he gets too focused, or worried, he looks kind of scary. The boy won’t let go of her for a time, but Aomine offers the kid his police hat and covers the wet little guy with his coat. That seems to help.

“Can I pick you up?” he asks, and the boy nods, so Aomine carries him back.

He’s quiet, other than shuddering occasionally, still hiccupping after crying for that long. He sniffs and sucks his thumb, head resting on Aomine’s shoulder as he takes him back to the police box.

His shoes squeak. He’s completely soaked and he smells like pond scum. This is the most interesting thing he’s done on the job by far for sure, and even though he resents the chill on his wet legs, he cradles that kid in his arms and feels a sense of relief. If this is what the price of _interesting is,_ then who cares about being bored.

  
What a day — he blames that stupid fucking park.  
  


When he gets back, he hands off the boy to one of the others, and they shuttle him to some grandfatherly officers, who fuss over him and keep him occupied with sweets and toys while they try to question him about his mom and dad and where he lives.

Aomine, for his part, is stuck in his wet uniform. Saving the kid was the interesting portion of his day, and the rest is the same as it always is, boring desk work, except he’s in wet clothes, and wet clothes take forever to completely dry if you’re still wearing them. He’s got goosebumps and he's clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering until closing time.

The mother had shown up some time before. The boy had escaped the yard and wandered off, leaving her to search frantically. She accepts her son back and bows in thanks to Aomine many times.

“Geez, it’s no big deal,” he brushes off.

He can’t say it wasn’t worth it, but by the time he’s home, he’s miserable and has a runny nose. “Welcome back,” Kagami greets absently, busy in the kitchen. Aomine smells dinner, and is immediately overwhelmed with the feeling of being glad to be home.

He starts stripping the second he’s in the door, removing his shoes and socks and stretching his toes, stiff and freezing. His vest goes right away, flung onto the floor carelessly. His thighs are damp and cold as he peels off his uniform pants, which he throws on the ground in a heap. The underwear will have to go too, because the seat is damp.

He plans to go straight for a shower and a hot bath, and leaves his clothes there in a wet pile — and he must really look _wiped,_ because Kagami doesn’t nag him about the mess, seeming to realize that he’s not in the mood for a fight.  
  
“The fuck were you doing today?” he wondered, turning curiously after Aomine didn’t greet him when he came in. “Geez, what happened? Fall in the pond, you fucking idiot?”

“Baby went for a swim,” Aomine explained shortly, unlacing his tie and popping the buttons on his shirt. He throws his hat onto the couch. “Playing on his own and got out of the house.” He grits his teeth and huffs, “Was fucking drowning, I shoulda’ see him sooner.” Because that’s the thing he can’t get out of his mind. He was there eating for ages, he should’ve seen him before he fell in, a little kid playing on his own. If he’d been watching—

“Good thing you were there,” Kagami hummed, and his eyes glow like Aomine should be proud instead of fucking exhausted.

“He kept crying the whole time I brought him back,” he muttered, shucking his undershirt over his head.

“You were there to save him.” Aomine looked up, but Kagami had turned his back and was chopping vegetables.

  
“Get in the bath, you’re gonna’ get sick.”  
  


As luck would have it, Kagami’s made udon, and when he gets out, hot broth, noodles, carrots, and pork are waiting for him, and it sits warm and heavy in his stomach as he eats. He could weep. His nose runs and his sinuses get blessed relief, and after his shower and about half a bowl of soup, that cold sticky feeling of the pond and the wet clothes fades. It’s the perfect comfort after this stupid day.  
  


 _‘I love you,’_ he thinks, but he still doesn’t say it.  
  


He looks up at Kagami, who seems to ignore whatever romantic mood he’s feeling, instead gobbling his food up like a hungry beast. He’s slurping his noodles and his cheeks are bulging as usual. Well, you know what they say. Food before romance.  
  
  
Aomine felt a lopsided smile tug his lips. He slurps too.  
  


Wife, huh. A doting wife. Maybe Kagami does kind of spoil him.  
  
  
The world doesn’t know about this thing they have. Aomine’s in love, but you wouldn’t know it the way he acts. Does _Kagami_ know it at least? Kagami’s always caring for him, but what does Aomine do in return? He doesn’t buy him flowers, doesn’t take him on a date, doesn’t say _I love you._

When does he show him that appreciation, huh? Why does Kagami spoil him when he gets nothing out of it?

“That hit the spot,” he hums, burping a second later. Kagami burps back, louder. They both express their disgust with each other but lock ankles under the table. Aomine gazes at Kagami while he eats and doesn’t get up, waiting until he’s done too.  
  


He doesn’t know why it comes to him then, but he says, “What would you say about going back to LA?”  
  


“I’d say where the hell did that come from?” Kagami replies curiously, squirrel-cheeks. Soft and loveable. Muscles gleaming in the light of the kitchen, dumb handsome face, pimples in his sideburns where he always forgets to use facewash. Freckles and bushy eyebrows and barely-noticeable stubble just on the edge of his jaw. That’s Kagami.

“Don’t answer a question with another question,” Aomine brushes off, letting the matter drop.  
  


   Kagami slurps and their feet touch. Life is easy. Life is good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With my heart in a sling, tail between my legs a-swinging, I'm sorry for leaving.
> 
> But when the palm trees bow their heads, no matter how wrong I've been, LA, you always let me back in.
> 
> — Rilo Kiley


	6. Chapter 6

Kagami’s baking again.  
  


It’s a hobby he falls in and out of. He likes it because it’s a change from his regular pace, cooking all the time on the stove, but it’s not his favorite thing.

When Aomine noted the random spurts of baked goods appearing, Kagami tried to explain. With cooking, he can tend to the food from start to finish, he can check on it and change it at any time, he can alter the final product, but with baking, the preparation is the only part he’s able to do, and then once it’s in the oven, he has to wait and see how it’s turned out. It’s an act of faith almost, hoping that it will bake evenly. Inevitably, Kagami gets frustrated with less than perfect results, and will take a break from making desserts.

He liked to frost and decorate though, so it’s something he returns to time and again. Damn Americans, eating sweets all the time.

Not that Aomine’s complaining, because he’s got a sweet tooth, so he likes it when Kagami bakes.

The last time he’d gotten into it, he’d made a shitton of Christmas cakes. Sponge cakes and strawberry short cakes and fruits cakes and nut bread — all of them elaborately frosted and decorated with fruits and chocolate.

When they’d been in LA, Aomine had gotten the full American experience. Christmas was everywhere, an event that built and went on for months, took over the stores, and was loved by families. It was something that was celebrated by virtually everyone, mostly having ceased to be a religious holiday. In Japan, Christmas is for lovers, and now that they’re back, that time is spent alone together, watching the snow, making love, and eating strawberry shortcake.

Plus, y’know, Kagami looks very nice with that apron on when he takes things out of the oven. He likes Kagami’s baking mood. The apartment smells sweet, his boyfriend’s in the kitchen, and Aomine is stuffed with cakes. It’s very homey.

Kagami’s baking again, so he gets homemade steamed buns with his breakfast, which he eats with his miso. If he hadn’t already loved Kagami before being able to eat his cooking every day, he would say that food really is the way to his heart — but of course, it’s actually basketball.  
  


“I’ve got desk duty today. Damnit,” Kagami gripes when he sits down to eat across from him at the table.  
  


Aomine smirks a little. Kagami hates being made to man the phones at the office instead of being sent out to the action, but he’s fucking _cute_ when he’s on desk duty. He’s got a picture of him on his cell phone, Kagami crammed behind the desk, wearing a collared shirt, an orange one with blue stripes on the shoulders, and a black baseball hat smooshing his hair down. The phone with the curly cord is held against his ear and his other hand is busy with a binder of documents. The best part is the look of diligence on his face — fuck.

“You said it!” he agrees, because he’s given gruntwork too a lot of the time and he feels Kagami’s pain in that respect. In any case, he’s glad they can rage about the same things. “I fucking hate filing shit,” he grumbled, still bitter about the wet uniform incident.

“Anyways. It’s only for a little while,” Kagami sighs, grinding his teeth. “They’re doing the calendar shoot next week, so.” He shrugs a shoulder nonchalantly, like Aomine’s not supposed to care and he’s just _mentioning_ it.

Aomine chews slower. “Those are unrelated topics, but…”

He’s fully aware that Kagami works with some pretty beefy guys. He doesn’t trouble himself with it, but when he’s reminded of that fact, y’know… it’s kinda’ nervous-making.

It’s not like he doubts Kagami’s a loyal guy, or that he’s not dedicated to what they’ve got, but there’s this dark thing inside him that does doubt. Because no one knows about them. They’re only real in their apartment. It wouldn’t be _hard_ for one of them to step out on the other. Because no one knows, and how can Aomine be mad about cheating in a relationship that doesn’t even technically exist? How can he get jealous? It’s not like they have any mechanism to air their grievances, because they can’t tell anyone else—  
  


Again, not that he doubts— On the other hand, beefy firemen. Plus Kagami’s like, _really_ gay.  
  


Sure, Aomine works with a ton of dudes too, but a greater percentage of them are middle-aged and older, because it’s not as physically demanding as firefighter work. Besides, people fall in love with Kagami wherever he goes. He’s beautiful like that — his basketball is beautiful — his soul is beautiful. Fuck.

Aomine raises his eyebrows, like he doesn’t _really_ care all that much. But in any case, if he has to be troubled with it, he can at least make the best of things, can’t he?

“You’re posing for the fireman calendar? Like the shirts-off, oiled-up muscles, holding axes and chainsaws and other phallic objects calendar?”

Typical that Kagami doesn’t care about doing something like that. That’s what he gets for having an American boyfriend. He might be the one with the porn mag collection but Kagami’s got no sense of self-awareness.

Kagami wrinkles his nose and glares as he eats. “Well you don’t have to make it sound so fucking gay, but yeah—” Aomine throws a hand up and lets it slap down against the table, rolling his eyes, because they’re both _really fucking gay—_ barring his love of Mai-chan, but there you go.

“All the guys say I definitely have to be in it.”

“Why the fuck is that.”

“They say it’ll sell more.” Damn right, it will. The only things that can beat Kagami’s chest and arms are Kagami’s ass and thighs.

Pursing his lips and picking at his food, he mumbles, “I mean…”   

“It’s for charity,” Kagami blurts, and Aomine narrows his eyes at him. Why is he telling him this anyways, is he trying to get permission in some weird jackass way? Or does he feel he has to explain himself to Aomine?

“If you do it, do you get a copy?”

Kagami’s shoulders relax even though he scowls. “Are you asking so you can put one with your Mai-chan collection?”

At first his reflex was to bark that he wouldn’t disgrace Mai-chan by putting her alongside a bunch of dudes, but Kagami had this weird expression on his face, the one that always begs to be teased.

Making a show of considering, Aomine smirked lewdly and hummed, “Well I can nail you any day of the week but I never get a piece of that when you’re in your fireman outfit, so—”

“Whatever Aomine,” Kagami groans, but moves past it. “What’s your day look like?” he asks as he serves himself another helping of breakfast and takes care to nudge some more rice and egg onto Aomine’s plate.

“Eh.” He shrugged. “Bi-annual survey, so that’s got me booked for the next week or so.”

“But tonight?” Kagami wondered as he started shoveling his food into his mouth, _scoop, scoop, scoop,_ the speed and amount of it still makes Aomine dizzy if he focuses on it. Kagami’s voice lowers to a murmur, eyes flicking up to Aomine’s curiously before going back to his plate. “You gonna’ be kept late?”  
  


That can mean only two things. Either they’re gonna’ fuck, or it’s basketball night. Either way— “Not planning on it.”

  
“Hm,” Kagami grunts in satisfaction. Aomine snorts a little. It’s still kind of gross how such a big guy can look cute in the weirdest situations. Damn chipmunk cheeks. Eats hard, plays hard, loves hard, and sweet as a peach. That’s Kagami.

Aomine leans over and ruffles his hair as he gets up to put his coat and shoes on. They take the bus together and separate at the station.

As a junior officer, it’s his responsibility to scope out the neighbourhood bi-annually and distribute a survey. The point is to take an account of households so their basic information can be recorded. Household occupants and their vehicles, their occupations and business addresses, any relevant information that may be useful in case of emergencies, so that help can be reached efficiently. More importantly, friendly rapport is built between the police in the kouban and the people of their jurisdiction. Aomine is supposed to familiarize himself with the citizens he’s meant to protect. He recognizes most everyone at this point, but he’s bad with names, so.

Almost everyone cooperates, making it less awkward to knock on their doors in a police uniform, and he brings the reports back to the police box when they’re through. Some old ladies passing the afternoon together even invite him in while they fill out the survey, giving him tea and snacks.

They’re slow about it and they need their reading glasses, but Aomine isn’t annoyed. He likes being given jobs that keep him away from the police box. A break from the routine — the free food is a perk too.

He sits on the floor at the kotatsu, feeling like everything in here is three sizes too small for him. It’s a nice little house for an old couple, and they have a nice balcony view towards the park. He sips the tea to be nice but mostly eats the mochi. Fuck, his old school friends would tease him if they could see him now, politely calling them ‘grandma’ and waiting patiently for them to fill out the card, content to listen to long rambling stories that go nowhere— he could take a nap in here, honestly.

When they comment on the beauty of the blooming cherry blossom trees for the third time, Aomine’s gaze is cast out the window again.  
  


“There’s no time to be in love like Tokyo in the springtime, young man.” That’s what they say.  
  


“Hmm,” he hums noncommittally.  
  


After being there for almost a full hour altogether, they finish the cards and send him off. He apologizes for the intrusion and thanks them for the snacks, and he heads onto a couple more houses.

He heads back to the police box, enjoys the breeze and the smell of the blossoms as he passes the park.

He thinks of Kagami in the grass, sweaty and panting from basketball, speckles of sunlight peppering his body where it peeks through the tree above him — petals drifting down, gently brushing his face. He thinks of that beautiful moment that passes him by and leaves him unsatisfied.  


There’s no time to be in love like Tokyo in the springtime, but Aomine wants to see another summer in LA.

 

. . .

 

Other junior officers that had also spent the day distributing the survey ask him out for drinks at the bar at night, a company drinking party he should feel obligated to attend.

“Nah, I’m getting home,” he refuses, finishing up with filing his documents.

“What do you do in your spare time, Aomine-san, that you never come drink?”

“I come sometimes,” he denies, because it won’t do for it to seem that he’s one of those guys who doesn’t go to any company events. Those guys never advance. “I play basketball,” he eventually mentions, like it was this casual thing that he wasn’t that good at.

Well, as of lately, it _has_ become a casual thing, instead of something he’d thrown his life into. It’s a thing he’d treasured that has left him behind, like a tarnished diamond. It’s become a pastime, forced to a second tier because sometimes that’s how life goes. They don’t have to know that.

In his spare time? He lazes around at home and sends naked pictures to his boyfriend. If Kagami’s home too, they fuck or play street ball. They don’t have to know that either.  
  


 _‘You gonna’ be kept late?’_ Fuck this, he’s got places to be.  
  


“Enjoy the drinking. I’m going back before you,” he says as he leaves.  
  


“Thanks for your hard work!”  
  


When he’s gotten home, making the trip back in record time, Kagami is waiting at the door eagerly. It’s only five forty-five, so they get their sports gear on. Aomine gets a t-shirt and shorts, and Kagami gets on his compression pants under his own. Basketball shoes, ball, water-bottles, duffle-bag — they head to the court, yacking away.

They play a few games together. They play threes with some guys who come looking to join. “Yosha! I’m on fire!” Kagami yells once they really get into it, as openly enthusiastic as always. They finish with one on ones, and then they go back for dinner at seven thirty. They get in the door and take off their shoes— goddamn, there’s nothing as orgasmic as taking off basketball shoes after playing hard for hours, his feet are so fucking sweaty.

Kagami kicks his off and heads in, socks damp and squeaky against the wood floor. “Fuck,” Aomine blurts, flapping his shirt to get air on his damp chest. “Your shoes smell ungodly.”

They rinse off real quick in the shower and then Aomine relaxes on the couch as he waits for dinner. Kagami makes this huge rack of ribs, and yeah, he’s glad he came home. Basketball and Kagami — what could better this.  
  


_‘I can think of something.’_  
  


When they’re done eating, they lay across the sofa, each slinging their head over the opposite armrest. They splay out obscenely and squeeze each other’s feet at the sore points. Kagami jokingly presses the sole of his foot against Aomine’s face like it’s a cell-phone, _hello, is this the basketball-idiot residence? —_ Aomine takes his moment to grab him.

Days like this, where they got to bed after a long day of work and play, they still brought plenty of passion home with them.

Aomine kisses him and feels him up and Kagami’s so ready for him, arms open in enthusiasm. They got to their room and sprawl across the bed, their clothes are gone, Kagami’s sucking his dick, and he’s eating Kagami’s ass, _rip_ goes the condom foil and they’re throwing each other around the bed in enjoyment.

They _fuck —_ his hands go great on Kagami’s waist, perfect place to grab. For a fit and muscular guy, Kagami’s really got some meat on him, and his body fat is perfectly centered on his chest and arms, plush and squeezeable. His thighs and ass are round enough that they jiggle just a little when Aomine slaps his hips against them as they fuck— his hands sink into Kagami’s sides, the perfect grips, look how his ass bounces every time he thrusts in, _faster, yeah—_

He grips Kagami’s sweaty mop of hair and presses him to the bed, lays on top of him. Kagami’s splayed out beneath him as he breathes in his ear and fucks him slower, winded and gasping.   
 

Kagami’s laughing breathily.  
  


There it is again, his throat closing up. Can’t buy you flowers. The girlfriend who makes your bento, who washes your underpants, why are you so cold? Why don’t you marry her? You’re not a bad guy, Aomine — it shouldn’t be hard.

 _‘I love you—’_  The thing he can’t say, it’s always there, kept inside no matter how much that feeling overwhelms him, swells up in his mouth. Because saying it means he has to confront the other thing, has to face _the pit._

He slows as he orgasms in Kagami’s warm embrace, sweet, sweet release— “One second,” he pants as he withdraws, pressing a kiss onto the back of Kagami’s head, his thick sweaty hair warm against his lips. Kagami rolls over expectantly, yet to be brought to satisfaction. He pulls back his stiff legs as far as he can, shameless about showing himself off at this point in their relationship. Hands behind his knees, on display like that, asshole pink and waiting, Aomine nearly groans at the sight. Look at him — just fucking look at him.  
  


 _‘I’m gonna’ give you the sweetest night,’_ he thinks.  
  


Because this, he can do. They can’t go out to a romantic restaurant, or double-date, or spend Valentine’s day together. He can’t show Kagami his appreciation for all that he does, can’t thank him for his efforts to care for him, can’t say it to him, can’t show what he feels — but he can do this, fuck Kagami for all he’s worth when he has him to himself, he can kiss him and make him feel his love, burn it into his nerves until he can’t feel anything else but Aomine’s love. So in the morning when they go back outside, he won’t forget.

 _‘I’m gonna’ eat your ass like it’s my fucking job—’_ Aomine licks his lips, panting, staring at Kagami laid out before him. _‘I’m gonna’ torture your prostate and make you cum until it’s so thin you’re shooting off water.’_

“Hurry up and finish me,” Kagami breathes, still winded from their exertions, “Don't make me beg,” and fuck if those aren’t killing words right there.

Aomine takes off the condom and makes an overhead shot for the trashcan. It goes in, but he realizes that he didn’t tie it off, and a nice stream of cum had gone shooting across the floor and had splattered the wall too.  
  


“Oh,” he muttered. “Whoops.” Kagami sets his legs down and they stare at each other for a silent moment, two, three—  
  


“... Score?” he offered.  
  


Kagami gives Aomine an exasperated look and then plants a foot in his stomach and shoves him hard, kicking him out of bed and onto his ass on the cold floor.

“Ow!” he shouts. He and Kagami stare at each other again.

He tries to glare, but it’s no good. He’s in that mood where Kagami kicking his ass is hot. _‘Hmm, I’m feeling it again.’  
_

Kagami purses his lips, looking over the edge of the bed at him. Aomine stares up at him and a goofy dreamy smile spread on his face after a second. Kagami groans. “Ugh, you’re fucking impossible. Get up here.”

  
Aomine climbs into bed and really makes Kagami sweat.  
  


Later, run ragged, they lay together. Aomine’s on his back. Kagami’s lying on top of him, a heavy dead weight, completely relaxed. The sheet is thrown over their hips.

Eyes shut, Kagami breathes heavily, cheek on Aomine’s heart. Aomine hugs him, nose in his sweaty hair. He’s shaking in his arms, ever so softly. Kagami’s laughing.

Aomine shuts his eyes and presses his face to Kagami’s head — tries to keep it inside. This thing, alive and pounding like a ball on the court. The love in his life, the beat of his heart — That’s Kagami.

   And no one knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drive fast, I can almost taste it now.  
> LA, I don't even have to fake it now.
> 
> You make me crazy, you make me wild—  
> Just like a baby, spin me round like a child.  
> Your skin so golden brown, be young, be dope, be proud—
> 
> Like an American.
> 
> —Lana del Rey


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't mind I have an LA crass way about me.  
> He loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart.
> 
> —Lana del Rey

It’s Friday.  
  


Kagami’s still on day shifts, so Aomine’s ready for a weekend of basketball, Kagami, and making love late at night.

Aomine usually gets up after Kagami, who rises early to make breakfast and pack their lunches, then comes back to wake Aomine later. Today Aomine rolls onto his back when Kagami slaps the alarm and sits up, he watches him yawn and stretch and wander out of their room — Aomine goes out to start some coffee, and passes the bathroom, getting a glimpse of Kagami shaving.

Kagami makes miso and rice and salmon strips for breakfast. Since he’s awake enough to do more than sit at the table in a daze like usual, Aomine watches Kagami stand at the stove and then pats him on the ass appreciatively when he brings their food over. Kagami yanks on his ear, but gives him a kiss. It’s a little rough where he’d missed with the razor. Kagami’s always been significantly hairier than him.

“I’m going!” he calls when he’s half-out the door, full and energized. Kagami calls back, and he’s already longing for the evening to come.

He drags himself through his last day of work for the week. He should be happier really. It’s an interesting day, as days go. He and his coworker had been called to go approach and question a drunk man. They stay next to him and take his arm when he sways.

“Go home,” Aomine tells him, but he just flops around a little. “Hey, go home, you shouldn’t be out here like this.”

Drunk guy can barely stand without staggering, and it’s midday, way too early to be this messed up. “Go home,” he repeats bluntly, with no response. “How the fuck do we get him home,” he mutters to Kouji, because they can’t just let this guy stumble around like a jackass, the shame will screw up his life.

Kouji tries talking to the guy some more, but then shrugs his shoulders. Eventually, they end up taking him back to the police box, and they put him in a little bed and wait for him to sober up. He’s groggy and apologetic and has one of those sad stories about his girlfriend leaving him after he’d lost his job— sorry for the trouble he’s caused, thank you for your help—  
  


Interesting day, but Aomine’s still glad to head home that night.  
  


He and Kagami play basketball until he reaches that high, the warm muscles and the endorphins, Kagami, still a challenge after this long, his true rival — they head home and Kagami draws the bath, sends him in first.

He comes in to shower by the time Aomine is in the tub. He lets his head fall to the side and enjoys watching Kagami, naked and wet, twisting this way and that to scrub himself with soap. He sits on the stool and washes his back with a towel, pulling it back and forth like a saw. His muscular body flexes and gleams, bubbles float down his back — he slicks back his hair and shows his bare forehead.

Kagami turns off the water and towels off. “I’m starting dinner,” he announces. “Stay and relax. I’ll call you when it’s done.”

Aomine stays and soaks in the bath, head tipped back, a wet towel on his forehead. The hot water feels great on his shoulders.

After dozing for a while, he opens his eyes when he hears a faint buzzing. The window above the tub is the first thing his eyes land on, and right there on the sill, there’s a dot moving around.  
  


He focuses on it — and immediately shits himself.  
  


Flinging himself backwards, he slips as he frantically tries to haul himself over the edge of the tub. Water sloshes out and onto the floor as he splashes and struggles — he finally dumps himself out of the bath and tumbles down to the wet tiles. He inhales deeply.

“Kagami!” he howls at the top of his lungs, crawling on his hands and knees in his hurry. He whips his head backwards, it’s still there, oh fuck, no, it’s gone, _where is it—  “Kagami!”_  
  
Kagami thumps down the hall in a hurry and opens the bathroom door.

The bee chose that exact moment to _swoop_ at him, and Aomine immediately let out a blood-curdling shriek, startling Kagami so badly that he promptly falls back onto his ass in the hallway before he can even say anything.

The bee divebombs him again and Aomine has no air left to scream, so all that comes out is this tiny choked, _‘eep,’_ as he hurls himself backwards.

On his next gasp, he hollers, _“Bee!_ Get that fucking bee!” He frantically ducks to avoid it, but it just kept following him, hovering at eye-level. “Ahh! Get it away! _Wah!_ Kaga—”

He cuts off sharply as this evil bee starts buzzing in his face like it’s trying to _land_ on him. He feels it touch his nose, and for one second he thinks he just experienced a heart attack.  
  


Then he screams until his soul leaves his body.  
  


“Aomine, shut up, the neighbours are home!” Kagami had recovered by that point and shooed that fucking murder bee of _death_ away from him with his _bare hand, so brave,_ and then took a handtowel and opened the window.

Aomine’s breathing hard and trying to calm his racing heart. That had fucking freaked him out.

Kagami successfully got the bee outside, hands on his hips in satisfaction. He promptly turned around to scold him — and tease him to an inch of his life. Aomine sniffed and rubbed his eye petulantly. He’s not crying. _Bee_ just got in his eye.

“I don’t get how you like crayfish and cicadas but not bees. They’re way grosser. The fucking eyes and legs, but _one_ little bee, and—” 

 _“Shut uuuuup!”_ Aomine howls indignantly, until Kagami waves his hands frantically, trying to shush him through his giggles.

“Your fucking face! Did you pee?!” Kagami gets out, laughing so hard that he can’t breathe.

“Fuck off! You’re scared of Nigou!” he accuses defensively. “See if you like it if I throw a dog in with you next time you’re in the tub, all naked and vulnerable!”

Kagami immediately sobers up. “Don’t fuck around, Aomine.”

“Hmph.” They snipe at each other a little more, and Aomine takes the opportunity to tease Kagami about being scared of dogs — even though, yes, he apparently still cries about bees. So what, that was really scary! Dogs are actually _cool,_ Kagami’s the one who’s the total chicken.

Kagami made hamburg steak, and when Aomine towels off and gets dressed, still sulking over his bruised tailbone and his pride, he finds a bowl of ice cream by his dinner plate, put there to comfort him even after all that teasing.  
  


If he hadn’t already finished crying, he’d wipe away a few manly tears. _‘Aren’t you the best, Kagami?!’_  
  


He cleans his plate, Kagami always looks pleased when he does that — and then he enjoys his dessert bowl and gazes across the table.  
  
“Are you gonna’ quit slurping that?” Kagami mutters. “You’re gross…” He likely only says it because he's embarrassed that Aomine’s watching him with eyes that he knows are too openly soft. Too intimate, too honest. Can’t say what they feel.

“Everyone slurps,” he refuses. “Fucking American.”

“Yeah. _Noodles,”_ Kagami barks, and Aomine does it again extra long and loud because he’s a little shit like that. “Quit doing that!” he demands.

“As soon as you quit peeing standing up.”

Kagami immediately groans and settles down a little bit, shoulders hunched. “Whatever, we’re not having this conversation again.” Clearly they are.

“If you sit down, you don’t have to use your hand to touch the toilet seat,” Aomine says leadingly, like he has many times before. “Or your dick.”

“So what,” Kagami grumbles.

 _“So,_ either pee or _congealed_ pee inevitably gets on your hands.” He sucks on his ice-cream spoon. “Fucking unhygienic.”    

“What the hell do you care anyways! You’re not the type to care about germs!” Aomine rolls his eyes, this isn’t that hard, Kagami.

“In any case, if you sat like a normal person, we wouldn’t have to clean the toilet compartment as often.” Kagami is silent for a full three seconds, and then promptly explodes.

“Are you saying I miss?!” he shouts. “I don’t miss!”

“You do,” Aomine accuses. “Everyone does a little. There’s too many variables. Double-stream, side-stream, the dribble at the end, low visibility at nighttime, the very real possibility of dripping on your pants— Why the _fuck_ would you stand.”   Fucking Westerners, peeing like they were raised in the woods.

“I have perfect aim,” Kagami growls, fists on the table, oh, he’s really steamed.

“Fuck your aim!” Aomine denies. “I’ve seen you shake off, you spatter everywhere!” Kagami just stares at him open-mouthed, silently offended. “And even if your aim _is_ perfect and you don’t drip on the seat, when the beam lands in the water, it creates a mist anyways!”

 _“Don’t talk about pee mist at the table!”_ Kagami finally shouts.

Pee mist is one of the many hardships that came with living with an boyfriend raised in America — in many respects, Kagami really behaved like one sometimes. For one, he’s fucking stubborn.

At least he’s not clipped like an American. They still cut dicks over there.

“It’s fucked up, Kagami. You’re gross,” he concludes, and Kagami puffs himself up like he’s going to try for another rebuttal, but he screw his mouth shut. “All that residue behind the toilet seat is _you.”_

Kagami grits his jaw, grinding it back and forth, but goes back to his food.

Trying to needle him a little more, because Aomine always has to see how far he can push, he complains, “You damn American.” Kagami still ignores him. Time for the killing blow.

“Kuroko told me that you wore your damn trunks to the onsen in high school.” Every time he so much as imagines that, he starts to laugh, and now is no different. He takes another bite of ice cream and snorts.

“Oh will you piss off,” Kagami groans when he keeps giggling.

“Sure thing, squirrel cheeks.” Kagami glared and chewed harder, cheeks round, like a very angry chipmunk. “Pfeh,” Aomine scoffed, laughing a little more. “Cute.”

“You know what’s cute?”

“What.”  
  


“You sitting down to pee.”  
  


Aomine doesn’t know how to react to that other than vaguely feeling that he’s been duped somehow, so he kind of just sits there with his spoon in his mouth as Kagami finishes his dinner and gathers up the plates.

“Kagami,” he says when he comes back for his ice cream bowl and spoon. He stares up at him for a second, head leaned back in his chair. Kagami raises his eyebrows to say that he’s listening, so spit it out. “Let’s make out.”  
  


Kagami practically hurls the bowl into the sink.  
  


That’s something he’s got going for him is enthusiasm. No one can say Kagami doesn’t have passion, but that might be why it’s always exciting, always interesting, even if it seems sometimes they’re at an eternal standoff. That’s what he’d looked for, isn’t it, his true rival.

He never gets bored of seeing Kagami’s face, or of spending the afternoon with him. He never gets bored of playing against Kagami, of racing down the court next to him. Never gets bored of kissing Kagami, sex with Kagami— loving him. His heart never gets bored.

Kagami fucks him, using his hands to hold his legs open, pushing behind his knees to flatten his body as he drives into him. His hair sticks to his face, his cheeks and forehead are flushed. Sweat is beading on his face, and drips off his nose and lands on Aomine’s cheek.

For a fraction of a second, their gazes meet, Kagami’s eyes searching his out and burning into him. Aomine avoids it, feeling it too deeply, his gaze shooting away from Kagami’s like two magnets with the same ends. That shouldn’t be what feels too much. Kagami has him spread open and naked and is fucking him face to face, but when they look into each other’s eyes, in the end it’s too intimate. It feels like he’ll cry. Like he has to say _‘I love you.’_  
  


He can’t bear it.  
  


So he puts out his arms and hugs Kagami, squeezes him until he’s crushed down against him— close to him, so they don’t have to look at each other. Kagami’s head fits into his shoulder, his face nestled next to his own, his breath in his ear. His lips brush Aomine’s cheek, they kiss him there, tenderly, along the side of his face, his sideburn, his ear.

Kagami’s dick is inside him, every nerve is on fire, his spine tingling with each movement, however slight. Kagami moves against him, warm and sentimental, pushing in deep to savor every time they come together, every time he fits his dick inside him like it belongs there, like they’re meant to be like that— His arms are around Aomine, so that each time his body jolts with the force of his thrusts, he’s caged there in his embrace. He kisses and kisses him, plants them anywhere his lips can touch, doesn’t even care if he kisses back.

Everything is too hot, Kagami is next to him, around him, in him, and it’s too close, unbearably close, his heart is racing and pulsing and has opened up like a flower, soft and defenseless, and he doesn’t want to admit to those feelings, doesn’t want to show them, doesn’t want to look into Kagami’s face and see how gentle he looks in this moment, because he’ll have to pull away. Because tomorrow they have to go outside again—

So he closes his eyes. If he keeps them shut, what reason does he have to turn away, and instead of speaking the truth of his heart, he plants a hand on the back of Kagami’s head, firm and heavy, and whispers, “You aren’t worth your dick if you can’t fuck me harder than this.”

Kagami seizes him in a burst of passion, wraps his arms underneath him in an instant, tight and hot, muscles straining — and he viciously presses his hips down, right up to the bottom, and he keeps fucking _pushing,_ grinding onto his prostate and sending his mind blank with pleasure. He stays in at the hilt and thrusts on him like that without pulling out, _press, press, press —_ deep, _fuck, it’s deep—_

Kagami groans, rolling his hips, stimulating him perfectly, and he can’t breathe, he’s trembling and digging his nails into his back, can’t feel his legs, can’t feel his face. Kagami pushes himself up, wipes his brow, he’s beautiful like that, he glows like a star through Aomine’s blurry vision. Just look at him.  
  
“Aomine,” he groans, head hanging between his shoulders.

And then he flips him, shoves him into the bed face-down, and fucks him with a ferocious speed and focus, _whack, whack, whack, slap, slap—_ It sounds like he’s being spanked, _feels like it too,_ the flat plane of Kagami’s hips slamming into his legs and back, his dick shoving into him and pummeling his insides.

He can’t do more than lay there and take it, head pressed into the mattress until he feels like he’s smothering. Kagami’s forearm leans across his back to press him down and his fist shoves on the back of his head. Aomine lays there with his legs spread and lets out a long moan of relief. Man, when he makes Kagami work for it, he gets really intense. He’s so focused and relentless that it’s almost like he’s in the zone. 

He doesn’t slow down either, only increasing in force as he goes on — when Aomine makes a demand, tells him, _give it to me,_ Kagami fucking gives it to him. He doesn’t stop, fucks him till his body breaks, he just goes until his lungs give out.

Yeah, that’s it. Fuck, that’s right.

When they’re outside they’re nothing, but when they’re here together — _make him really feel it,_ so that when they don’t have this, he remembers. So he can hold onto this like it’s something real. So it’s burned into his nerves. The thing he can’t look at. The thing he can’t say. So he feels it every second when they have to get up in the morning and go back outside.

But no matter how intense it gets, no matter how stupid and catatonic he goes from pleasure, it doesn’t take away the feeling. When he drives Kagami to the edge and turns him into this wild animal because he can’t bear it otherwise, the look on his face, too deep, too intimate, even then, when they’re going at it like beasts, there’s always something there that Aomine can’t escape — _Fuck me, Kagami. It’s not making love. It can’t be when it’s this rough._

Except it is. Because that’s Kagami. And no matter how far he goes, there’s always an element of tenderness that can’t be erased, something that Aomine can’t hide from. 

Kagami snakes an arm underneath him and holds his face in his hand, turning it to his. His body slaps violently against his from behind, he slows, but doesn’t ease up on the force. Aomine’s body slams back and forth, _feel me, feel me, rough, rough, rough —_ but Kagami is not rough.

His tongue is gentle, his kiss is gentle, his breath is gentle. His hand supporting his head, palm underneath his cheek, the caress of an angel — _making love._

When Aomine cums, it’s like it’s ripped out of him, like his balls are being forcibly drained — Kagami keens like he’s dying, and his head drops between Aomine’s shoulders like a heavy stone, his body following a second later, sinking him into the mattress, squeezing the air from his chest as his ribs compress.

A hot and heavy blanket, Kagami inside him, burned into his nerves.

When Kagami separates them and rolls off, they lay together and they pant, quivering and staring at each other.

They move at the same time, rushing to put their arms around each other. They hold one another and they kiss and kiss, naked and pressed together. Their dicks gently nudge together, wet and sensitive, and Aomine wonders if that’s his own heartbeat, or if Kagami’s is just working as hard as his, thundering against his chest.

Once they’re clean, fresh out of the shower, Kagami put new sheets on the bed, and they lounge together above the covers to wait for their hair to dry, comfortably naked.

“You farted while I was fuckin’ you,” Kagami notes from somewhere near the foot of the bed, sprawled on his side, his butt and thigh beautifully stretched out next to Aomine’s head. “So unsexy.”

Aomine knows he’s fucking around because that’s what Kagami does. He’s less sensitive about bottoming than Aomine is and he likes giving him hell because of it — he _knows_ this, but it still provokes the expected reaction regardless.

“It’s not a fart!” he barks indignantly, sitting bolt upright. Kagami raises an eyebrow and twists onto his back. “You’re not funny, Kagami!” He’s infuriatingly calm, mouth twisted with an amused smirk.

Aomine hits him in the face with a pillow and Kagami just snickers, putting an arm up to block the next couple blows until he can grab him around the waist. Aomine shoves him, pushes at his head and chest, but Kagami hangs on like a barnacle. “It’s cause you pull out to the tip when you thrust, so you’re just packing me with a bunch of air!” Aomine hollers, finally getting free, sitting a few inches away with a sulky pout. “What the fuck kind of sound do you expect that to make!”

“Hmmm.” Kagami puts his arms behind his head and closes his eyes smugly.

“Kagami, quit being a shit!” he demands.

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t bad,” he hums, and fuck, he sure knows how to irritate Aomine. “Definitely would pack again.”

Aomine barely holds onto his temper, but then Kagami says some shit in English that flies over his head other than something about his asshole—

He clenched his hands in front of him, two seconds away from _throttling_ him. He freezes, a smirk spreading over his face. “Says the guy who sounds like a dying animal when he blows.” Kagami’s eyes shoot open, and he scowled. Aomine smirked wider.

_“Rude.”_

“You started it.”

Kagami sat up too then, baring his teeth. _“Who_ started it?!”

“Don’t gimme’ that! It was you!”

They both swing at the same time and start wrestling, half-heartedly beating each other up. It’s mostly a lot of hair pulling and tumbling around. Aomine puts Kagami in that headlock they’d made him learn at the academy and Kagami throws his weight around to try and disengage, and then he fucking _lays_ on him, the fatass—

At some point, Kagami pulls his dick — _yipe! —_ and he twists Kagami’s nipple — _yow! —_ and they both yelp and squeak, and then laugh at each other — _the fucking noise you made! —_  and they kiss.

They kiss and kiss and Kagami does that thing he always does, sighs contentedly and hums onto his lips. Aomine opens his eyes. “If you’re thinking about farting on me—” Kagami is silent for a second, and then hurls himself away. Aomine scrambles after him. _“Kagami!”_

Tonight is the same as any other night.  He and Kagami bicker. They play basketball together. They eat dinner. They kiss and have sex. They fall asleep side by side. It’s never something new, never anything different. It’s always the same.

Aomine lays next to Kagami, whose head is resting on his shoulder. His arm is around him, and his cheek is pillowed on his fluffy brown hair. When he lets his eyes drift open, it’s a perfect view down between their bodies, facing each other, a mirror image. The planes of their chests, their bare sides breathing as one, then disappearing underneath the blanket past the stomach.

He can see Kagami’s lashes too, the slope of his nose, the curve of his cheek, too close to focus on for too long.

They lay together in silence. Kagami has his eyes peacefully shut, content to rest next to him. A whisper of a sigh, the shudder of his body, a sleepy yawn. Aomine curls his fingers around Kagami’s back, in his hair, cups his head, feels his throat close.  
  


Don’t let her go when you’ve got her — _I don’t got her._  
      
This one’s a keeper.    _Like fuck._  
  
Why don’t you marry her? _Too young and immature._

I hope you get flowers once in a while.    _Can’t._

  
  
Lucky kid.        _Yeah._

 

_Yeah._

 

“Kagami.”

 

He hadn’t been sure if he was asleep or not, but Kagami shifts, reacting despite the softness of his voice. “What?” Kagami whispers, barely awake. He sniffs, and doesn’t open his eyes, adjusting his head underneath Aomine’s.

“Why don’t we go back to LA,” he breathes, so soft he can hardly hear himself, but Kagami does.

“How come?” Kagami murmurs. Aomine ignores him.

“We can find a place there.”

Kagami opens his eyes, shifts his head, tips up his chin to try and catch his gaze. “Why do you keep saying this all of a sudden?” he wonders. “It’s not like we’re going back for school.”

“No,” he agrees at length.

“Are you thinking of playing basketball again?”

“Maybe.”

That hadn’t been his reasoning, to be honest. He hadn’t considered that, and maybe that tells you how much this has really been bothering him, that basketball wasn’t the first thing on his mind.

He can feel Kagami’s gaze on his face, searching and creased with confusion, but he doesn’t say anything more. Can’t explain himself. Not when his reasoning involves that thing they can’t say — and _the pit._  
  
“I don’t understand you sometimes,” Kagami rasps, so quiet. So gentle. Takes hold of his heart and rips it to shreds.

  
“Nothing,” he breathes, closing his eyes and turning his head into the pillow.

 

     “Nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well anywhere where the city lights are hopeless for you, we don't care or need another song for California. —MCR 


	8. Chapter 8

He and Kagami plan a trip. They go to a ryoukan together for a vacation during Golden Week.

Since coming back to Japan years ago, they haven’t gone anywhere special for a getaway, just the two of them. The fact that they’re having this trip now, Aomine knows it’s partly his fault. Kagami’s the one who’d booked the room, and it had to be because he’d noticed that Aomine was acting weird. Weird enough to concern Kagami, at least.

He knows Kagami worries about that kind of stuff, worries about _him._ Just another thing they can’t acknowledge directly, can’t talk about. Kagami has tried to bring it up, his sudden desire to go back to America, but Aomine always changes the subject.

Since they’re not talking about it, who knows what Kagami’s assuming is wrong with him — hates his job, caught in a slump. In need of some time away.

He should be eager for this weekend, because everything he and Kagami go do together can easily be passed off as a boy’s night. They do it the same way they pass off the rest of their life in the face of their friends and families. They’re so used to being rivals in public that this excursion shouldn’t even cross his mind, shouldn't be of note.

Except for some reason, this time it hits him hard. It’s really bad — it’s present from the second they leave the apartment together with their bags. _Nobody knows._ Aomine grit his teeth and let Kagami handle everything, just following along in silence. He should be able to walk next to him and talk about fuck all like usual, should be able to relax and enjoy himself, maybe even let their shoulders bump occasionally. He should be able to feel excitement, because nothing’s wrong. Nobody knows. It doesn’t even exist outside their home, so what’s the problem anyways.

But seated side by side in the bullet train, two big guys traveling together when everyone else has their wife and kids in tow, Aomine can’t bring himself to speak to him. Can’t even look at him. Kagami has to realize, has to know that something’s off with him, because he shouldn’t be this tense, shouldn’t be this worked up— he doesn’t get like this usually, both of them so used to the act that it’s something natural, something they do without thinking. Except he is, and it’s bad, and Kagami must realize what’s bothering him. He fucking knows.

If Kagami is bothered by his mood, he doesn’t show it. Not that he could anyways. It’s not like he should care. In the train, they’re not lovers. That door is closed. Kagami busies himself with his ipod, mildly looking forward as he passes the train ride in silence, and Aomine stares out the window and tries not to choke on this thing in his mouth.

Can’t hold your hand in the train. Can’t take souvenir photos of us kissing. Can’t enjoy taking a romantic vacation. Can’t buy you flowers.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, honestly. Doesn’t know why this is suddenly hard after so long. He and Kagami are lovers and they’re _buddies,_  and they spend time together outside the house quite often. They go to the movies, they go out for fast food. They play basketball, and they visit the beach sometimes, or go hiking — but when they do, there’s a missing element, something that keeps all that from being a _date,_ because the rest of the world can see them. So they have to be roommates. They’re rivals. They can be together outside but still be safe, because nobody knows. They’re safe because if they act normal, people assume they’re best friends and don’t see any deeper, they’re fooled into thinking that’s all there is. This is different. It’s a lover’s trip, for two men who are not supposed to be lovers.

Nobody knows. They’re safe. Nobody knows — but it doesn’t put him at ease. It just gets worse. Nobody knows.

Maybe that’s why every step feels like he’s dragging lead feet along with him. He stares above everyone’s head level, unseeing, follows Kagami, lets him manage their transfers and their taxi ride. Accepts a coffee from him and lets accusations of being unnecessarily grumpy go in one ear and out the other. Ignores Kagami’s half-hearted attempts to cheer him up and snap him out of it so that he can actually enjoy himself the way he should be at the start of a vacation. Ignores him and stares ahead, silently dragging his feet.  He can’t focus on anything other than this feeling.

He can feel it when they get the taxi to the hotel with their cases. And when they’re standing in the lobby together, the smiles they receive from the staff at the counter, Aomine feels it again. And when Kagami says the name of their reservation so they can get their room, he _feels it, feels it, feels it—_ The heavy stare, _so many eyes,_ he can feel sweat beading on his neck, because it feels like _everyone knows._ Everyone knows just by looking at them together. They can see it on his face. They can see the way he looks at Kagami, they know by the way his eyes go soft — something he can’t help. They look at them and they _know._ How could they not.

Aomine stands next to Kagami in silence and tips his chin up stubbornly, casting an eye around the room. He swallows, tries not to let on that his back is damp with cold sweat. If Kagami feels what he feels, he can’t tell. He probably doesn’t. He’s as he always is, completely unaffected by the stares. He makes it look easy, but then, for him it _is_ easy. It’s normal to him to play this game of chicken, to put on this oblivious act that fools people into thinking their suspicions are mistaken — it’s normal because Kagami's strong. He’s brave. He was raised American and doesn’t feel ashamed of himself, not the way Aomine does.

When did he start feeling shame when he thought of their relationship? He didn’t used to — it used to be easy for him too, the act. It used to be normal for him, but the past few weeks, something in him has changed. Aomine doesn’t know what happened exactly, doesn’t know exactly when the act stopped being normal, when it started to become something he had to think about — when it started to scare him that he might screw up, that others might guess, that his mask was slipping. This isn’t supposed to be hard.

Kagami checks in, friendly with the staff, who provide no comments and ask no personal questions, and who tastefully ignore them and the two-bed room they’ve booked. He receives their room key from a hostess, and Aomine follows him.

And when they shut the door, Kagami turns towards him and lets out a sigh, hands on his hips and a smile on his face. He’s looking at Aomine with something like hope in his expression — he’s looking at him with an element of tenderness that can’t be completely erased.

“Are you done with your attitude?” Kagami questions, like he knows why the traveling had bothered him so much and is tentatively wondering if something’s really wrong, wrong enough that he’s not going to open back up again, even though they’re here now and it’s over.

“What attitude,” he denies.

“Don’t give me that, I mean it—” And Aomine allows himself to feel some sense of guilt that he’s wasted time they could have spent laughing and enjoying the journey, wasted it _brooding_ and being anxious. Kagami had gone to such pains to bring him here, put in the effort like he always did without expecting anything back, and he can’t even return that affection with the bare minimum. Can’t show the gratitude Kagami deserves.

It shouldn’t be hard — because Kagami requires so very little to keep him content. Return his kiss. Play basketball with him. Eat every bite of dinner. Appreciate the clean house and don’t complain about the spots he may have missed. Be happy to be there with him — that’s all Kagami wants and it’s so little to ask.

And the hope in his expression, the eagerness there, the worry, like he’s doing what he does every day of his life, spoils Aomine, tries to please him, loves him hard and intense and so unselfishly — that’s Kagami.

He wants to say he’s sorry. Wishes he could break past the bubble in his throat and tell him everything in his heart. But the most he can do is huff through his nose and come out of his mood.

“I hope you’re done, because you’re fucking annoying to look at when you’re frowning that much,” Kagami nags, but his brows are creased.

“You’re not funny, Kagami,” he grumbles, which seems to be enough, because Kagami’s shoulders slacken a little in relief.

“Get in that damn yukata,” he orders. “And if you say shit about me putting mine on wrong, I can’t guarantee your safety.”  
  


Aomine lets out a soft snort, smiles. How can he not.  
  


They go to the outdoor spring together, wash with the buckets at the faucet counter, butt-naked like everyone else. If they weren’t really secret lovers, they might have scrubbed each other’s backs and thought nothing of it, but in any case, they sit side by side and mind their own business.

“What the fuck are you doing, put that brush back,” he hisses to Kagami, who grunts in reply and moves his towel from his shoulder to his lap, holding it there as he stands up.

Aomine teases Kagami, who clearly doesn’t know where to look, still a little modest, and then they get in the onsen and enjoy the steam.

They go in and out of the springs, they eat food in their room, and they lounge in yukata, waited on by the hotel maids — and they have sweaty, kinky sex all over the room, including the jacuzzi tub. A retreat from the city, hiding away from the outside world, just the two of them. It’s the first time they’ve touched each other when they weren’t at home, something real to hold onto.

And when it’s time to go home, they pack up their stuff and they stop touching each other at the door, same as always. They return the key to the room. He doesn’t let his hand drift to Kagami’s as they walk to the bus-stop. They stand apart a few inches on the train. They walk home and everything’s as it always is.

It’s unfair and it bubbles inside of him, tries to turn into something ugly and dark, something with nowhere to go. Because it might be normal to them, but it shouldn’t have to be — and that’s what makes him sad.

And for the first time, he really lets himself grieve the loss of what should be. Lets himself mourn that this is how they are together. Lets himself _rage_ at the unfairness of it all, that he has to feel _shame_ for what they are to each other. He bitterly resents the fact that he has to stop holding Kagami’s hand. That he has to stop loving him just because they’re not in complete privacy, that they can’t exist as they are out in the open.  
  


“You wanna’ play some basketball?” he asks.  
  


It’s not that he’s a clingy guy who wants to hold onto Kagami every second. He wouldn’t even if he could — but it’s not having the option. That’s the point. Because if he wants to, he can’t.

“Yeah!” Kagami says with an excited grin, and it’s easy again. How can it not be. Look at him. The sun catches his eyes and Aomine just stares. Turns his head forward. Keeps walking. Closes his hand into a fist so that it can’t touch Kagami’s.

And when they’re home again that night, everything is as it always is. Basketball. Fighting. Dinner. Kissing. Sleep. Repeat.  
  


_“Kagami!”_ he shouts, _“Put the goddamn seat up!”_  
  


Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat—

 

. . .

 

Aomine feels like he’s living out a series of what should be romantic moments on a loop, and his life is a skipping track that gets stuck at the part of the movie where the boy and the girl kiss each other and the music plays. He keeps living that moment where their hands are supposed to brush as they walk together on the street, and then they look at each other in surprise, and they blush as they hold hands for the first time, shy and elated.

He keeps getting stuck on that day in the park after basketball, his heart so filled with love and satisfaction, heavy and full and _complete,_ basketball and Kagami, and the blossoms drop on Kagami’s hair as he lays there panting, so perfect, so beautiful.

He keeps living that moment of them sitting under the plum trees in what should be a romantic moment, yet being unable to kiss. Unable to embrace. Unable to be the boy and girl in the movie.

The two of them, they can never reach out like that. This thing they can’t say. Can’t be.

It’s awful, this horrible downward spiral that sucks the joy out of every other aspect of the life they share. Laying in bed next to Kagami, his sleeping face, his hairy legs wrapped through his under the blanket. Aomine will reach out and squeeze his hand even though Kagami’s asleep, and he wishes he could tell him how much he wanted things to be different — for them like this, for _this_ to be the normal thing.  So that it doesn’t have to hurt.  

He wants to tell Kagami that he’d get serious if he could, that they could just keep going on this way, living together, sleeping in the same bed, buying groceries for their meals and decorating their house, watching basketball on TV and laying across the sofa. He wants to tell Kagami that when he’s old and stiff, when he can’t do his fire rescues, he’ll still want to do all that. He’ll still want to keep going on this way. He wants to tell him that he’d do all that in a heartbeat, and that he wishes he could do more.

He wishes he could tell him that he wanted to be the boyfriend he deserved. He wishes he could say he’s sorry.  
  
Weeks pass that way, and it starts to weigh on him. He finds himself feeling a little down. If he ever gets like this, it’s always brief, and he’s usually taken out of it when he’s with Kagami, but lately even that can’t take this thing out of his brain, this dark corner that feels dissatisfied, unhappy, and afraid.

Is this how life goes? You just drift on through, and then after a certain age, maybe twenty-five, nothing new or interesting happens to you? You settle in, you find someone, and life just goes on that way? You do all your fun stuff in that short time period when you’re old enough that your parents can no longer stop you, but still young enough that you don’t have responsibilities to hinder you? And once that time is gone, you just settle in, because you never thought about what you were going to do after that— so you just keep going—

Maybe that time’s already passed him by and he’s entered the settling down stage. He feels like he’s sinking ever downwards, lowered into the pit, because he does want more for them, but he doesn’t see what he can do about it.. He doesn’t see a way out, a way to change how things have ended up.

He thinks about how everyone’s always telling him to get serious, _Satsuki,_ life doesn’t have to be boring and mundane because it’s what you make of it, he can make a change if he wants to, _Tetsu._  He can have the most exciting adventure of his life, because taking that step isn’t hard, it’s fun — _Kouji.  
_

_—_ and Kagami’ll be there for all of it.

But as he thinks on it, that step he wants to take, he can’t take it.  
  


It’s why he doesn’t say _‘I love you,’_ not ever, even though he knows it does damage, even though he can see the way Kagami looks at him when the romantic moment comes and then passes by unsaid, undone.

He knows he hurts Kagami, never calling him by his given name. Avoiding his gaze during sex. Never telling him he loves him. Closing up. Turning away. But he just can't do it.

Because Kagami’s something that got inside of him and then spread him open wider than he’d ever meant to let him. He’d gotten in there and then expanded into this thing that took on a life of its own — and Aomine wasn’t ready, wasn’t big enough to contain him. When Kagami warms him up, lays him out bare, his heart open like the first blossom of spring, soft and fragile— it’s too intimate, and he can’t do it, even though he knows it hurts him.

That look on his face kills him every time, _pain,_ heartache, and yet he can’t stop himself. Can’t be what he deserves.

He can’t talk about loving Kagami because then he has to think about how he can’t buy him flowers. Has to think about how he can’t hold Kagami’s hand outside the privacy of their apartment. Can’t kiss him, not even once. Can’t speak openly about their relationship. Because nobody knows.

Tetsu actually _does_ know about them. He’s the only person who has been formally informed, but it’s as if he hasn’t, because they never talk about it. They’ve never acknowledged it once. He’s never told his parents, or Satsuki, or any of his old classmates, any of the friends he and Kagami have shared throughout the years. Their teams don’t know, former and otherwise.

To everyone else in the world, they’re just rivals who have grown into friends, and are bachelor roommates in adulthood. Nothing more.

He can’t imagine gathering them all together, Kagami at his side, and telling them the truth. He can’t imagine kissing Kagami goodbye at the bus stop, or telling him he loves him in front of the world. It’s this dream that’s too far away to reach, a futile wish.

It’s this thing that closes his throat, a door in his heart that’s forever closed. Something he can’t see over the top of. It feels like a black pit. A cage.  
  


But there was another time. It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when things had been different.  
  


When they’d just left highschool and Aomine had vowed to go to America to join the NBA. When he’d first realized that he’d fallen in love, and had followed Kagami overseas to a country that wasn’t his homeland, where he didn’t speak the language or know a single person. He’d made that journey and gone to school there, followed him so that they'd never have to stop playing basketball together.  
  


Over there, Aomine had seen guys hold hands.  
  


He’d seen guys kiss in the open street, and it had been a spectacle to him, something that twisted his stomach. He’d never seen anything like that before and he couldn’t take his eyes off it, scandalized and fascinated. It was something that stopped his heart, closed his throat.

But others hadn’t paid much mind. Some glanced over, even stared, but not nearly what he’d thought would happen. What he’d expected was to feel the whole world turn those men the cold shoulder all at once, shun and scorn them, pretend they weren’t there. But it wasn’t like that.

Men kiss and backs aren’t turned on them. They go about their daily business like any other couples would. Some had rings. Some had babies in strollers. Shopping in the grocery store, strolling along the boardwalk, loving life. Gay bars, LA pride, the colored flag — it was like a whole different world.  
  
  
Most of all, he remembers the California sunshine, the happy buzz of joy, the busy life of the city, and Kagami, Kagami, Kagami—  
  


Kagami translating for him so he can shittalk their opponents on the court. Kagami taking him to the state fair so he can see an American rodeo. Going to Las Vegas with Kagami and his team for a weekend boy’s trip. Eating the insanely large portions in the fast food joints, driving everywhere by car, seeing the stars and stripes put on every consumable good imaginable. Kagami showing him the California shoreline and surfing in the distance, grinning eagerly, _take my picture!_  Kagami leading him through the farmer’s market, one finger hooked into his. Kagami’s voice, so different when speaking English, rich and sweet like a movie star.

He can’t remember ever feeling so free in his life as he had that summer, him and Kagami on their own, when they’d just been starting out, still so young — when they’d still taken that freedom for granted.

But it doesn’t have to be just one or two summers. That could be their life. They can be those guys, holding hands and kissing out in the open, in the park, on the court. They had, and they could be again. 

He can escape that pit. He doesn’t have to live that horrible moment where he chokes on the love trapped in his throat, unable to say the words, unable to share the love in his heart, the light in his life, unable to show that to the ones he cares for.  When the flowers fall in Kagami’s hair, he can kiss him—

He can leave the cage that doesn’t allow him to reach out to Kagami because of a deep and crippling fear of losing everything else. He doesn’t have to tell them, doesn’t have to tell anyone, doesn’t have to say the words and look into their faces and beg them not to turn their backs, beg them, _don’t reject me._

He can turn his back on them first. He can escape that cage, escape that fear. They can run away, they can go back and live there, a place so far away that those people, the ones who can hurt them, they won't be able to reach them. They can go live there and be free. They can be together. He can buy him those damn flowers.

  
And there’s something else too.

  
He can marry Kagami. They can have a wedding there, in the states. In America they can get married.  


When they’re here, they’re nothing to each other. They’re trapped. They’re together, but not really, forever stuck in that limbo. It’s something the other shoppers turns their eyes away from, the two of them in the mall, looking for cookware or curtains. Something his mom and dad don’t mention when they visit his parents’ house, even though he’s sure they have their suspicions.

The two of them always spending time together after work, they two of them living together even though they’re old enough to support themselves — their coworkers and friends never comment on it, never face or acknowledge it, if they’ve guessed.

Even Tetsu, the one person who knows for sure, never so much as references their relationship. He just pretends it’s not happening, just like his fucking parents.

It’s something they have to keep silent on, something they can never say, because the second they do, that’s when they lose everything and everyone they love. That’s when the world turns its back on them. Here, they’re always going to be stuck like this, and that’s what Aomine’s settled into. A relationship that is going nowhere. In Japan, they can’t be anything.  


So why stay in Japan.  


Kagami’s in his arms again, tonight’s just like any other night. Kagami’s sweaty face, Kagami with his cum on his lips, Kagami breathing his name in a moment of passion, _Daiki, Daiki—_

It’s in his mouth, and with it bubbles up so much pain and frustration that he feels tears build in his eyes.       _‘I love you.’_   It’s not supposed to hurt. Holding it in didn’t used to hurt this much.

They lay together, staring at the ceiling. Aomine’s resting his head next to his side. Kagami’s dozing and stroking his hair, gentle and slow. Muscular, warm eyes, affectionate, the man in his bed — that’s Kagami.  
  


“Kagami. Let’s go back to LA,” he murmurs.  
  


Kagami’s ready for it this time. He actually opens his eyes and sits up, scrutinizing him in bewilderment. “Why?” he tries. “Why do you wanna’ go back? You can’t speak English worth dick, Aomine. You almost dropped out of school. I couldn’t leave you alone because you would’ve gotten lost.”

“Geez, I’m not a kid. I could get around.”

“Barely. You could hardly speak enough to be allowed on the USC team,” Kagami muttered, eyes narrowed suspiciously. Aomine’s too tired to argue about this.

“I know the useful stuff.”  The majority of which is from Kagami, who curses during sex — _oh fuck, fuck, oh god—_

“Don’t you wanna’ go back?” he murmurs, gazing at Kagami, brow crinkling. “Your dad lives there, you grew up there for awhile, so why are you always asking so many questions?”

“I’m trying to figure out why you keep asking that.” His voice is hard and almost accusatory. Aomine is silent, because he’s not trying to start a fight.

His mind wanders in a daze. He wants to go back. Doesn’t Kagami want to go back? Won’t he follow him out of the cage? Doesn’t he want to run away—

“Are you in trouble or something?” Kagami demands lowly, his face serious, eyes steely.

Aomine watches him swallow. “... You… you don’t like your job,” he tries, voice descending into a whisper, almost cracked. “You’re dissatisfied with…” And he breaks their gaze.

See, he can’t say it either.

 _‘Us. Just say ‘us!’_   _Do something to let me know that this is real, that you’re as serious about this as me, that you — that you feel what I feel.’_

But Kagami doesn’t say it. He just swallows again and looks away, lips parting like he doesn’t know what to do, like he really thinks— “Knock it off,” Aomine hisses back, and Kagami relaxes a bit, closes his eyes and clenches his jaw.

When he opens them, they’re shining with something so soft, so open, filled with so much love and concern and pain that Aomine can’t stand being next to him, can’t stand this conversation any longer.  
  


This isn’t supposed to hurt.  
  


“Is this because we don’t play basketball as much anymore?” Kagami tried softly, as though to comfort him, to figure out what was bothering him so that he can comfort him, can make it better. But it can’t be made better.

Too soft, too intimate, too close — “Is this about what happened in middle school?”

“No,” he denies immediately. “It’s not.”

It’s about the tournament in high school. It’s about the moment Aomine first realized that it was him all along. The rival he’d searched for. The one who could reach the top and find him, alone on the court where he’d been for so long. The one who could stand on the court with him and play.  
  


It’s about being able to play that game of basketball forever.  
  


“Whatever. Let’s drop it.”  
  


It’s really hard in those moments. The moments when they _are_ together, when he’s holding his lover, and feeling like it’s about to fall out from under him in a second.

Because he wishes he could tell him. Wishes he could tell him he wants to marry him. Wants to leave this tiny apartment and move in together for good, in a grown-up house. Wants to pick out furniture and paint the walls and make it their home, wants to go to the jewelry store and buy twin golden rings, wants to play basketball and sleep next to each other and eat dinner together, see Kagami shaving every morning and yell at him about forgetting to put the seat up every night — and kiss him, kiss him and whisper that he loves him.

He wants to tell him all of that, wants to love him and be the man Kagami deserves, but instead he chokes on it. It’s hard in those moments because he knows that wish is a spark off a campfire, a flare that immediately turns to ash on the wind. It can’t survive. It’s nothingness.

It’s not supposed to hurt. It’s not supposed to be hard. He likes a life that’s easy. He likes a good life.

Aomine Daiki, junior police officer, has a wonderful boyfriend. But does he really, if he can’t say that to another living person, _I have a boyfriend, his name is Kagami—_  Such a big part of his life, such an important part, and yet he can’t share it, can’t let others who interact with him in public know about it. Because really, it’s not a part of his life, not his real life. To everyone in the world, he doesn’t have a boyfriend.

Even Kagami. Kagami never calls him that, hasn’t called him his boyfriend or acknowledged that they were dating since they’d left the states. Once they’d come back here, the walls had closed in.

This whole thing that they have between them is a mirage, something that only exists when they’re alone. It turns to smoke the second they go outside. In Japan, they’re nothing to each other.  
  


_‘In Japan, you can wear his ring, but not mine.’  
_

This thing can never grow, can never proceed, they can never take the next step. Meeting the parents, buying an engagement ring. Marriage. A pet. A baby. There’s no point to it, it’s going to be this endless secret, it’s never going to let up, never going to get easier, never going to pay off.

But they can run away. They can escape. There’s a place they can go where that cage doesn’t exist.  


_Kagami surfing. Playing volleyball with girls in bikinis and eating a popsicle together. Kissing under an umbrella. Arranging shells in the sand into the shape of a house, both their names written underneath the roof._

_Him and Kagami laying on the beach, rubbing noses. LA summer._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is easier where the walls are red.  
> Brooklyn is a place stuck in my head.  
> Here in Paris the rain is falling; my heart belongs to Brooklyn.
> 
> I'm sick of four star food, I want to be where life is, as simple as two-bucks pizza slices.  
> I swear I'll tell you next time I knock at your door that I am not leaving Brooklyn anymore.
> 
> —Woodkid


	9. Chapter 9

Aomine’s been in a weird mood.  
  


He’s been staying out late, taking his time in coming home, wandering around in a daze. When he’s home, he drinks and reads his dirty magazines and watches AV right in the living room while Kagami's home. He's irritable and isn't in the mood to talk. When Kagami sits next to him or tries to ask him about his day, Aomine moves off. When Kagami comes looking for some attention, embraces him from behind and tries for a kiss, Aomine will stick around long enough for a quickie — but then he gets up and showers alone, won’t stay in bed next to him.

He knows it’s hurtful, he can tell that the way Kagami brushes it off and leaves him alone is a show. He can see the look in his eyes.

But he doesn’t know what to do otherwise — can’t stop hurting him, can’t stop being the source of that pain, and maybe that’s why he ends up going out and meeting Tetsu, even though he’s been avoiding him for some time. At some point, their jobs keeping them too busy became an excuse — because there’s times Aomine feels so frustrated and helpless and fucked up that he wants to ask Tetsu what he should do, wants to vent to him and rage about his situation, ask him for advice— but he can’t.

Really, he wonders if Kagami has called Tetsu or something, wonders if he’s told him that he’s acting weird, acting distant. He wonders if Kagami’s asked Tetsu to talk to him, because the way Tetsu’s acting is as mysterious as ever. He doesn’t know how else Tetsu would know something’s up with him when they haven’t spoken in this long.

They meet at the station and walk around for a while. There’s polite small talk from Tetsu, and Aomine is mostly silent and brooding, hands in his pockets. They end up on a park bench outside, staring out over the duck-pond.

At some point, Tetsu seems to give up on trying to get him to crack and get to the heart of what was bothering him, taking it upon himself to irritate him.  
  


“Are you and Kagami-kun having a fight?”  
 

“The fuck do you mean,” he denies viciously, becoming hostile and defensive.  
  


“You seem upset.”  
  


“Like hell.” Arms folded across his chest, Aomine spread his knees apart wide, Tetsu banished to the far side of the bench, where he sits primly, as unreactive as ever to his rudeness. “Why the fuck are you talking about Kagami all the time,” he grumbles.

More importantly, why did Tetsu assume that Kagami was the reason behind his bad mood — but, well, they both know why. Except they don’t talk about that.

“Kagami-kun is my friend too, after all,” Tetsu notes. “He was my light for a long time, you know,” he says, and then tacitly adds, “but now.”

Aomine glances over at him for a second, waiting, but Tetsu is silent. “Now,” he prompts, when it’s clear that he’s ended the sentence there and doesn’t intend to say more.  
  


“...” Tetsu just stares at him impassively, like he’s supposed to understand.  
  


Aomine huffs, throwing his head backwards. “I don’t know what that fucking means, Tetsu.”  
  


“Light casts a shadow,” Tetsu elaborates. “And it cannot be contained to a single point. It shines indiscriminately on everything around it, Aomine-kun.” He goes on, “And when two lights meet—”

Aomine cuts him off with a huff. “Get outta’ here with that bullshit,” he snaps, this thing inside him immediately reacting with denial. “I don’t understand your fucking light metaphors.”

You wouldn’t know it, but Aomine is in love. Except Tetsu does know. He knows but he acts like he doesn’t. He knows and he never says it. He closes his eyes, turns his fucking back.

“I want to go back to LA,” Aomine says, almost in a challenge, never mind that he’d cracked the way Tetsu’s probably been waiting for.

“Is that so,” he notes, neutrally.

“I should’ve gone back once my mom was better,” he grits out. “I guess I just never got round to it. Things change — but I wanna’ go back now.” He stares Tetsu in the face, trying to suss out any reaction, a twitch of his eye, the shape of his mouth. “It might be too late for me to get scouted by a pro team, but you’re supposed to try for your dream, right?”

“I’ll be sad to see you go, Aomine-kun, but I say, never give up.” Aomine hummed, looking away. “I’m sure you will be scouted, Aomine-kun,” Tetsu concluded. “And Kagami-kun will be for sure.”  
  


Aomine holds perfectly still for a moment, because Tetsu never says anything pointlessly, without meaning. _What is he saying. What does he mean by that. Why did he say that—_  
  


“Who says Kagami’s coming too,” he muttered sharply, giving Tetsu the side-eye, but Tetsu just raises his eyebrows.

“After all, Aomine-kun followed Kagami-kun to America in the fir—”

“Whatever,” he cut off, waving a hand. Looking away and pursing his lips, that stupid thing rears its head again, the thing that wants Tetsu’s advice, wants to tell him his troubles, even though he can’t. Even though they can’t talk about this.

“I’ve told him we should go back, but it seems like he’s fighting it,” he murmurs, shifting his feet.

Tetsu doesn’t reply. Aomine grits his teeth.

“I’ve wasted a lot of time,” he says, but really what he means is, _Kagami has wasted time._ Voice low and dark, he got out, “He didn’t have to come back.”

“It was very nice of him to come back with you, Aomine-kun.” Where does he get off saying that so gently.

“What’s it to you anyways,” Aomine snapped, glaring at him. Stupid Tetsu. “He’s a fucking idiot, that’s what. I wouldn’t have done the same, if it had been me,” he forces, feeling this knot of pain and hate and sorrow swell up in his chest.

“That was the stupidest decision of his fucking life,” he rages, “He didn’t have to quit like that! What the hell did he have here that was worth coming back for anyway?! What the fuck could be more important than his basketball career.”

Tetsu just fucking blinks at him, like his anger doesn’t perturb him, like he doesn’t even care that Aomine has just spilled so much ugliness out between them, has spoken that regret and bitterness aloud, revealed this _guilt_ he’s been carrying with him — the first time he’s said it to anyone, maybe even the first time he’s admitted it to himself. Why did Kagami come back? He could’ve stayed in America. He didn’t have to come back here and live in this fucking cage with Aomine, he could’ve gone pro. Why the hell did he turn his back on his dream.

“I think you know,” is what Tetsu says, so quietly that it sets Aomine’s teeth on edge, because he does know. And Tetsu knows too.

 _  
_ _‘If you know, why don’t you just fucking say it, Tetsu.’_

   
“He was gonna’ try out for the Chicago Bulls, well fuck that now,” Aomine muttered sourly.

That’s when Tetsu says, after a moment’s silent hesitation, “Kagami-kun did try out.” Aomine looks up. “Just before you were called home.”  
  


“What?” he hears himself say. The hair raises on his neck.  
  


Tetsu looks away, hands folded in his lap, seeming to be thinking or something, and Aomine is so stunned, so frozen there that he can’t reach out, can’t grab Tetsu by his skinny shoulders and fucking shake him and tell him to _say what he means—_

“Aomine-kun,” he began at last, “Kagami-kun has told me never to tell you this, but those years ago, before you came home to Japan, Kagami-kun _was_ scouted.”

Aomine stares at him, listening numbly as Tetsu tells him that Kagami had been scouted by a pro team. He did go in to try out for the Bulls. He’d been offered a contract.  
  


And he’d come home with Aomine.  
  


He can’t react. He can’t say anything, can hardly breathe or register what he’s looking at, Tetsu’s face, blank as ever, perhaps a little creased at the eyebrows — because he remembers this. He remembers that conversation.

He’d come out of his room and stood in the hallway, staring at Kagami humming and cooking dinner, burgers and hotdogs. He remembers the way a stone of dread and resignation had hung heavy in his gut, because he has to leave America. Has to quit school. Quit basketball. He has to let go of everything.

Aomine had trudged in and when Kagami had turned to look at him, he’d seen the way his face immediately dropped in concern. He didn’t waste time, and just said it. “Mom’s sick.”

Kagami’s quiet for a long time, because he understands. He knows what this means. “Oh…” At last, he wipes his hands with a towel and takes his apron off, moving into the kitchen doorway, approaching him slowly.  
  


“You… You gonna’ go home?”  
  


Sympathy, pity, and so much fucking disappointment.  
  


“Yeah,” he’d gotten out, short and rough. “She told me to stay and focus on basketball and school, but from what Dad said… It’s serious.”

“I’m so sorry.” Of course. Kagami knows what he’s going through. He’d lost his mom young. But Aomine, he’s going to lose everything else too. School in America, playing NBA. LA summer with Kagami. All of it’s done with now.

And Mom. He’s going home to see her, but she might not even make it.

Aomine hung his head and grit his teeth, and in a burst, he punched the wall, shouting, _“Fuck!”  
_

Kagami’s there suddenly, his hands on his shoulders, squaring them, holding Aomine still. So steady, so strong and warm, Kagami’s big palms, one on either side. “Hey, hey, keep your head,” he says sharply, and looking back, Aomine wonders why Kagami had known what to say in that moment, wonders if he’d already made up his mind to throw everything away too. He wonders if Kagami had planned to tell him about the contract, planned to celebrate with him, and then decided to keep his mouth shut the second Aomine told him he has to go—

“You’re not gonna’ help your mom by flipping out,” he said, voice firm and unwavering.

Aomine was a fucking mess, he threw a fucking tantrum, screaming and raging in Kagami’s face, _what do you know, shut up,_ but he just holds onto him, doesn’t let go, doesn’t turn away or flinch from the ugly look on his face, bared teeth, poison words— Kagami just looked at him the same way he always did, and holds on.

“I don’t want my basketball interrupted,” he snapped, vicious and choked with frustration. “Do you know how much time I’m gonna’ lose, going back home?! This can’t fucking happen to me! Why does it have to be now! Fucking unfair,” he grits out.  
  


Tossing against Kagami’s grip, he burst, _“She’s ruining everything,”_ but it came out hollow.  
  


He doesn’t mean it. Kagami knows he doesn’t mean it — and on the next second, Aomine’s head falls forward, his hair brushing Kagami’s shoulder, and he stares at his feet, at the floor, clenches his eyes shut and tries to speak.

“I wanted her to see me. All that time I spent growing up playing ball, the jackass I was to her in middle school, she has to know it was worth it. She’s supposed to be proud of me,” he said dully, and then lifts his face, tries to look at Kagami and make him understand.

“I’m her only son. She’s supposed to be proud of me,” he growled through his aching throat.

Kagami took a long breath and sighed. “Look,” he said, and his voice sounded as dead as Aomine felt, because he must have already made up his mind. “Life’s a long thing. There’ll be time. You can come back.”

Aomine felt like laughing, felt like punching Kagami in the face, because they both know that’s a load of bullshit. They both know that leaving now means leaving for good. “We’re in the prime of our athletic careers. Our potential can only go down as we get older,” he croaked bitterly. “This was my chance.”

“Don’t think about that,” Kagami denied. “Just get through it. Besides...” He dug his fingers into Aomine’s shoulders, shaking him a little, and then, after a breath, he grit out, “There’s more in life than basketball.”

Aomine stared at him in disbelief, and this yawning abyss opened up inside him, because there isn’t. There’s no point to going on if he can’t reach his dream, he’d never thought about doing anything else. He can’t imagine his life without being able to play basketball. Kagami’s the same. He’s always been like him in that respect, a basketball for a brain — and here he is saying a bunch of bullshit to make him feel better, _there’s more in life than basketball,_ but neither of them believe it.

“What’s a basketball-idiot like me supposed to do else.” Because he doesn’t know what to do now after this. He feels lost. Like his life’s purpose has been irrevocably taken away.

“I dunno’, but life’s long,” Kagami said, so resigned and weary about it. “And even if we do end up going pro, we can only play until what, our thirties? Forty is pushing it? What about after that. You had to have had some plan for the rest of your life. Didn’t you ever think about what you’re gonna’ do from age forty to eighty? Basketball’s only gonna’ be about half of your life, so what are you gonna’ do?”

And all he can think of, his life when he’s old, too old to still dribble the ball, stiff knees, aching back, too slow, no stamina— all he can think of is the old couple in his neighborhood when he was growing up. The wife who waters the flowers, the husband who does simple community work.

All he can think of is him and Kagami in an apartment, something like the one they’re living in now, in LA. Kagami cooking. Suit and tie. Grown up house. A pet. What’s going to be left behind when he can’t play anymore? Who’s going to love him once that’s gone. When they’re too old to play basketball, when he can’t shoot a hoop anymore—

“Whatever.” He sniffs. Instead of saying Kagami is right, he just chokes it back.

It hurts.  Because he doesn’t get to have that either. Basketball career is gone, and all that comes after it. The apartment, Kagami’s stupid face, all of it. Everything’s been ripped away from him all at once.  
  


“Basketball is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do,” he breathed, and puts a hand to his face.  
  


“Let’s book a flight,” Kagami said, “and close the lease.”  
  


Aomine picked up his head, temper already building, because that was the opportunity he needed to lash out, to take out his rage and frustration and grief on someone instead of accept it, instead of feeling sad and accepting what he’s lost.

Because he hadn’t realized until now, now that he’s looking back years later, that the whole time Kagami was comforting him, the reason he’d sounded so tired and resigned was that he was already deciding to let go of the chance Aomine had lost. He was already deciding that his greatest dream, that being in the NBA, _signing that contract,_ he’d already chosen to give it up.  
  


But in the moment, he hadn’t understood.  
  


“What?” he muttered darkly. “But where’re you gonna’ live?”

“Shut up and let’s book a flight,” Kagami insisted stubbornly, unyielding.

“You can’t come,” Aomine huffed, voice building hysterically, because he realizes then what Kagami means to do. “What, you’re gonna’ drop outta' school?! You’re gonna’ throw up everything and leave the country?!” Kagami set his jaw and wouldn’t look at him. _“What about your team?!”_ Aomine howled.  
  


“It doesn’t matter.”  
  


Aomine punched him dead in the face, so hard that his knuckles popped when he struck Kagami’s cheek. Kagami’s hand flies to his face with a grunt, head snapping back with the blow.

“Like fuck it doesn’t!” he seethes, shoulders trembling, because he’s not going to stand here and let Kagami bullshit him and say that basketball doesn’t matter, that his team doesn’t matter, that the championship, the rivalry game between their two schools, the Victory Bell trophy, that it doesn’t mean anything to him— He won’t let Kagami lie and say that letting go of it all doesn’t hurt him. That he doesn’t care, that it doesn’t matter to him at all. How can it not matter. It means everything.

Kagami doesn’t punch back. He just grits his teeth and sucks the blood up into his nose, a harsh sniff. He doesn’t let go of Aomine, _let go, let go, let go of me and be free—_

“I won’t let you do this!” Aomine tried, but he can hear himself start to break. Kagami’s not supposed to come with him. He’s not supposed to quit because of him. How does Kagami expect him to live with that?

“Suck it up,” Kagami grit out, clearly doesn’t give one shit about his issues. He just glares him in both eyes, red and hot with determination. “I’m going.”

“Fuck you,” Aomine muttered, and he can’t talk anymore. He turned away and hid his face, slumping against the wall. “Don’t act like I’m gonna’ thank you for this,” he cried.  
  


“I don’t care if you do or not.”  
  


In the end, they take the flight together, all eleven and a half hours of it. They fall asleep on each other, heads leaned together, hands clasped under a blanket.

And it hurts to leave. Aomine feels like he did in middle school. The thing he loved, he had to watch it turn to poison and fall away from his reach. He wishes he was dead. Hates his life and where it’s led him, because he’s lost everything.

 

    No, not everything. He still has Kagami.

 

It had already been a big sacrifice — for Kagami to uproot again like he has so many times before and leave it all behind, it had already been the biggest sacrifice he could have possibly made. More than Aomine could have ever asked for, more than he could ever deserve or hope to repay.

To know that on top of that, Kagami had just been scouted for a contract and had walked away from it just like that, that he’d given that up, it all made sense — that’s why dropping out of school hadn’t mattered. He’d been planning to quit school anyways because he’d made it onto the team of his dreams. He’d fucking made it, and he threw it away. Flew back to Japan and kissed that goodbye.  
  


And for what. For what.  
  


He’s so angry that he’s seeing red, can feel tears in his eyes, a scream building in his throat.

“Surely you see now, the reason he came home,” Tetsu says, but Aomine stands up.

“I don’t see shit. All the more reason he should have stayed.” And when he looked at Tetsu, he was blinded by hatred.

Tetsu had known this whole time. Knew how much Kagami had done for him, knew what they were to each other, how important this must be to Kagami that he would give up basketball for it. Tetsu knew that and he still turned his eyes away in disgust.

Aomine turns his back on him and storms home.

 

   He confronts Kagami in a rage.

 

“Kuroko told me you got scouted,” he accused immediately, and it’s almost like it was those years back, Kagami in the kitchen as he comes in with the bad news.

Kagami looks up, turns off the stove burner, and he doesn’t even deny it, just looks at Aomine with those fucking eyes— “All that time ago, when I had to come home and you said you’d come with me, you could’ve stayed,” Aomine snapped. “Why the fuck didn’t you say yes.”

Eyes hard, Kagami turns around again, ignoring him. “Why the fuck would I.”

Maybe he’d expected Kagami to look guilty, or to explain himself or something. All this did was make Aomine angrier, because he doesn’t want to hear this, can’t accept it.

“Don't give me that! That was our dream!” Aomine stormed into Kagami’s space, grabbing his shoulder, trying to make him look at him, _admit what you did—_ “Why would you walk away from it?!”

Because he knows the words that they’re not saying, but he doesn’t understand — and that’s what he can’t bear most of all.

“You’re pissing me off,” Kagami warned.  
  


  And then he says it— “What, to stay with _me?”_ he howled.  
  


To stay with him? To keep something going that could never survive? To salvage something that wasn’t even a fucking relationship?

“To pity me, since I wouldn’t be able to stay too while you were going pro?! What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?!” Aomine screams. “What about high school?! You fucking left during high school and you didn’t care then about leaving things behind!”

“It was different,” Kagami grit out, and fuck him for keeping his cool, for trying to talk him down and not escalate into a full on fight. Aomine wants to punch his stupid face again, maybe he’ll finally walk away and actually make something of his life and find someone he can actually love.

“What, because that was before everything?” Aomine laughed bitterly. “It wasn’t before shit.” Kagami shakes his head and tries to get around him, but Aomine blocks his way, shouts in his face— “Why the hell do you think I followed you to America in the first place!”  
  


 _‘I loved you. I already loved you.’_  
  


“Get the fuck away from me,” Kagami growled lowly. “You don’t get to question my decisions.”

Aomine’s shoulders drop and he feels his throat tighten up. Because Kagami won’t say it. And he won’t say it either. Neither of them can. They’re in a fucking cage — and he’s put them in it. He’s brought them here and trapped them in this impossible situation, and Kagami won’t even say the reason why he thought it was worth it. Won’t say he loves him even once.

“You piece of shit,” Aomine spits, but the fight has gone out of him completely. “Basketball means everything. You gave up the chance of your life.”

“We have time,” Kagami says, and it’s like a window to the past, his firm gaze. He looks the same as he did then. He’s made up his mind and Aomine can’t talk him out of it, can’t make him regret.

“And besides,” he tells him. “Some things are important.”

Aomine’s head hangs, and he can’t look at him. He’s the same weak kid who’s watching his whole life crumble beneath him in an instant, losing everything at once. He hasn’t gotten any better, any wiser, any stronger. He can’t listen to Kagami say this. Can’t listen to the strength in his voice as he tells him he’d throw it all away again because that’s what this means to him.  
  


“Even more important than basketball.”  
  


It shouldn’t hurt this much, because Kagami’s always been like that. Aomine turns away, tries to pull back whenever his heart lays open, soft and vulnerable, but Kagami makes that act of faith. He opens himself up to him, he puts his heart into this and hopes that when it comes out of the oven, it’s something beautiful — but Aomine closes up instead, doesn’t reciprocate, and it does irreparable harm. It fucking hurts Kagami, but he still came back anyways. Came back to be with a worthless piece of trash like him.

How is Aomine not supposed to feel like he’s ruined Kagami’s life? Kagami’d had everything going for him, and just because Aomine lost control of his life, Kagami had decided to give it up too. He’d left it all there because he wanted Aomine more.

“I wouldn’t have done the same,” he says, and he doesn’t mean it. Kagami knows he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t know why he says it really. Maybe it’s one more effort to drive Kagami away in that last moment, tell him he’s wasting his feelings on someone undeserving— but Kagami never swerves.  
  


“I don’t care if you would have or not.”  
  


Aomine looks him in the face, and it’s true — Kagami’s never cared. He doesn’t care if Aomine shows gratitude for anything he does. Just fucking look at him. Aomine stares at him as he stands there, shining like a star, the glow of his hair, his eyes, the ferocity of a wild beast, steady and unmoving, so strong, and his lips start to shake.  
  


“I hate you,” he chokes out, voice trembling.  
  


Kagami approaches him slowly, like he’s an animal ready to bolt, and opens his arms to him. Aomine is on him in an instant and Kagami embraces him. They cling to each other. “I fucking hate you,” Aomine wrenches out, bitter and watery, but he claws at Kagami’s back like he can’t breathe. Kagami holds on, head against his, and curls his fingers into his shoulderblades.

He’s never been as brave, or as strong as Kagami. He isn’t strong enough to face his parents. He isn’t strong enough to live free. To be proud. To hold his head up when the world turns away. He’s not strong enough to love Kagami unashamedly — not the way Kagami loves him, a fierce unselfish blaze of passion.

Because he knows deep down, if he wanted to live like a social pariah, if he wanted to live openly, Kagami wouldn’t pull away. He would do it. He would struggle along with Aomine and hold his hand in the street, because that’s who Kagami is. Because he’s always been stronger and braver and better than Aomine is, and he wouldn’t be afraid to love Aomine in front of the world, if he had to.

The words are there. The thing they don’t say. The thing that has been between them and that has been true since the day they left America. Maybe that’s why there are tears in his eyes, because he can feel it. It’s why Kagami came back, it’s why he’s put up with him for so long and will continue to do so even though he’ll never get anything in return. All he wants is Aomine, as undeserving and slobby and horrible and mean as he is — he’s still holding onto him. Because that’s all he wants.  
  


 _‘I love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I love you more than basketball.’_  
  


Kagami doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to —  Aomine shuts his eyes and they stand there in the kitchen and Kagami rocks him back and forth. Don’t act like I’ll thank you — _thank you, thank you, thank you._

Aomine squeezes tight, eyes pressed onto Kagami’s shoulder, because somewhere in the bitterness and the frustration with what they have to suffer through, all that they’ve lost and given up to have the little that they share, he clings onto that. At the end of it all, Kagami doesn’t let go, and the part inside of him that is still soft and fragile, the feelings he can never admit to, he’s soothed at the comfort of Kagami’s arms around him, swaying him and holding his head in place.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, voice breaking. Kagami brings his hand to the back of his head, fisting in his hair tightly, pressing him to his shoulder— _rocks him, rocks him._ “I’m so sorry,” he chokes.

“It’s not your fault,” Kagami says, and he’s firm about it, so unresentful and confident in it that Aomine believes him. “Your mom was sick. You had to come back. That’s just the way things go.”

“But you—” Aomine cuts off, because his throat wrenches tight with grief. _You didn’t have to come._

“I don’t care.” Aomine sniffs hard, lets Kagami hold him. “Look, Kuroko wasn’t supposed to tell you. You were already messed up over it and I knew it would only upset you worse. I’m sorry for keeping it a secret. But you know what?”

“What,” he coughed, sniffing. 

“I’m not sorry I did it,” Kagami murmurs, and Aomine snorts. Stubborn, stupid, and loyal as ever — that’s Kagami. Aomine hugs him. Rocks with him. Tries not to weep.

Hold onto her. Marry her.    _I can’t. I can’t. I can’t._

 

_Kagami, let’s go back to LA._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would it be that nice if you were not part of it?  
> Would Brooklyn be worth crossing the Atlantic?
> 
> Life is easier where we can join our hands.  
> Your face is a face that's stuck in my head.  
> Here in Paris rain is falling; my heart belongs to Brooklyn
> 
> — Woodkid


	10. Chapter 10

He and Kagami are meeting with their high school friends and teammates at Kise’s place.  
  


Kagami’s got these huge fuckass tupperwares of chocolate cake squares. He’s in his baking mood and he’s let Aomine bum around and lick the spoons and shit — and those fucking cake squares are obscenely delicious. They’re for the party, so naturally he’s complaining that they should leave at least one at home for them to eat.

“Aomine,” Kagami starts as he gets everything together. He's all dressed up and stylish, wearing that jacket that Aomine likes, and the seat of his pants is printed with two basketballs. “I’m going to tell you something gently.”

He’s waiting by the door with his coat and shoes on, arms folded. “What.”

“Quit eating so many sweets. You’re putting on weight.”

“Geez, Kagami, tell me how you really feel,” Aomine griped. Kagami doesn’t respond, so he decides to be a little shit. “It’s your damn cooking that’s done it, anyways. Goes straight to my thighs.”

Kagami snorts and stacks the tupperwares, carrying them to the door. He reaches out and cops a feel when Kagami bends over to put on his shoes. Honestly, he’s the beefy one in this relationship, heavy-set and soft and beautifully filled out with plush muscle, but Aomine doesn’t mind. There’s so much to grab — more boyfriend to love, really.

“Don’t blame my cooking, who’s the one eating it?” Kagami mutters, but doesn’t stop him feeling around, letting him do as he likes as always, just as long as he doesn’t get too greedy.

“You gonna’ put me on a diet?” Aomine drawls, giving Kagami another playful squeeze on the bottom. “I could just eat your ass for a week and nothing else—”

“Like hell, Aomine,” Kagami huffs in exasperation, but Aomine can see him hiding a smile. Aomine opens the door for him and kicks it shut behind them as they head out. “We don’t play every day anymore. You’re not working it off.”

 "I know how to work it off." He appreciatively gives the basketball on the left a generous smack.

"Hey! Cut it out!" Kagami finally snaps, glaring at him as he turns to lock up. Aomine shrugs, hands in his pockets, and can't bring himself to look regretful.

"How're you gonna' put somethin' that looks that good on display and then get mad when I enjoy it," he mutters.

"Stop talking about sex, and stop eating so much junk food."

He groans and throws his head back. "Ugh,  _Kagami,_ just lemme' keep some of the damn cake squares!"

“You're not a teenager anymore, Aomine! Like I'm saying, if you keep shoving yourself with cake all the time, you’re gonna’ get fat.”

“There’s only one thing on me that’s fat and that’s my chub.”

Kagami stares at him for a solid three seconds and then recoils like he’d swallowed a lemon. “Ugh, what the fuck, don’t call it a _chub.”_

Kagami’s screwing around with the keys, trying to hold the cake cases in one hand and get the key out with the other. Instead of helping, and because he’s a total bastard, Aomine opens up his mouth and enunciates very loudly and clearly, “My _dick—”  
_

“Whatever Aomine, shut up,” Kagami heads down the stairs. “Quit stalling and let’s go.”

 _‘Do we have to,’_ he wants to complain, but follows, muttering that it wouldn’t be so bad if Kagami got chubby, because that just means there’s more to enjoy— Kagami tactfully ignores him.

He and Kagami entertain at their place sometimes, host gatherings so their old buddies can get together. Kagami cooks, they throw the foam football around in the house and break shit and they watch sports — but something always happens.

You see, Aomine can expect not to be able to reach out for this thing he has with Kagami when they’re outside their home. It’s something he’s ready for and lives with daily. But when they’re in the apartment, that’s their place. Their safe haven where they hide from the world, where they can take off the mask and just be as they are.

And to have other people come in, it means that even there, he has to pretend — and it fucking sucks.

It’s the same reason that Aomine has mostly avoided hanging out with their friends in a group since coming back to Japan — because he and Kagami have changed, but everything is as it’s always been, it’s like they’re back in high school, and none of them know. He and Kagami have to keep up this ridiculous front, can’t be who they truly are, not like they used to be. Every second of it is a lie.  


_‘It won’t always be like this.’_  


That’s what he’s told himself for so long. But that isn’t true, is it. He can’t imagine a time when it won’t be like this, can’t think of a time when they’ll be free. What, some distant point in the future when his parents are dead and won’t know either way? Once their friends all move away and lose touch? Once there’s no one left to run away from?

But that’s the thing. That’s why he’d held onto Kagami so tight, why he’d felt his heart tearing in two and why he’d _wept,_ because he knew that it’s never going to get better, that it’s never going to hurt any less. It’s a burden he can never escape — and Kagami had chosen to come here and live under this miserable cloud with him, Kagami hadn’t cared that it’s always going to be like this. As long as they were together…

The worst part of it is he so desperately wants to be proud of Kagami, the way he knows Kagami is of him, and the way he would be if the world were simpler. Aomine wants to be proud, wants to let it beam out of his face every time he sees Kagami, because _look at him._ He wants to show him off, his wonderful boyfriend, wants to _brag_ — because why shouldn't he brag about having a handsome American at home who can cook and can dunk like a pro. _Kagami’s in a fireman’s calendar. Kagami surfs. Kagami rescues kittens. Kagami can go all night with me on the court, and in the sheets. Kagami makes me homemade lunches — and he love, love, loves me—_ The whole world ought to be jealous of him, and it would be, if it knew.

If he could raise his head with pride and call Kagami his own.

It feels hollow, meeting the kids he’d known in middle school, grown into men, because he and Kagami stand across the room from each other. They can only sit next to each other a couple times per night, to avoid gathering suspicion. The only interactions they have are to bicker and shove each other around like they would have in their high school days. Can’t let anyone see that things have changed — but he feels it then more than ever.

Watching Kagami laugh with others, the way he feels something light up in his brain just seeing it, hearing it, _look at him—_ but he can’t go to him. He has to choke that spark down, turn his eyes away.

  
He’s in love but you wouldn’t know it.  
 

It’s this gnawing empty hole. He can’t be the ace of his old team, can’t be the same Aomine Daiki that everyone knew, can’t be their friend and teammate, he can’t be a junior officer in the police box— he can’t be that person and be Kagami’s boyfriend at the same time. Living his life and loving Kagami are two things that are kept separate, things that will ruin each other if they come into contact, drops of poison.

He doesn’t know why it had been so easy to live in the cage for so long, so easy to feel content with life, but the last few weeks, he feels like he has to thrash, to flail and shove out around him. He has to get out of this cage. Has to get out of here.

Maybe it’s finding out that Kagami had sunk himself into the hole with him when he didn’t have to. Because losing himself was one thing, but letting Kagami suffer with him is different, it just _is._ Knowing Kagami had refused that contract and had come back to live this _shit life,_ it was too much to bear.

He found himself out on Kise’s balcony with a beer, overlooking the city, and just for a second, he thinks, why does it have to be this hard. Why not make things easy.

Tetsu comes out. He can tell from the way he hears the sliding door, but then nothing else. He still jumps just slightly when he hears the voice come from near his elbow, “Is something the matter, Aomine-kun?”

He seems hesitant, like he thinks Aomine might still be mad about their conversation from before. He hasn’t talked to Tetsu since then, after all.

He gives a long sigh, elbows on the railing. “I dunno,” he murmurs, hair ruffling in the wind. “Lately I’ve just… I can’t see where I’m going.”

He can’t see where this is supposed to lead. Because like Kagami said, life’s long, and living this same life to old age, never being able to— never—    

He just doesn’t think he can go on with it. They’re still pretty young, mid-twenties, and spending the rest of his life like this in the shadows just isn’t possible for him.

“The future is sometimes hard to think about, I agree.” 

“No, but I—!” he bursts, then grits his teeth. “...”

He feels like a fucking fool. He feels so easily seen through. It must be disgusting how obvious it is that Kagami’s the one he has his eyes on, the one he’s focused on all the time. It must be pathetic how his eyes go soft, something he can’t hide despite hiding everything else.

It’s an old saying that love even reaches the crows on the roof and that’s how he feels. Like his heart is pulsing so strongly that even the birds outside will feel it and fall in love too. Even Tetsu. Even his friends. His coworkers don’t know about Kagami, but they can tell from looking at him, that’s why they think there must be a girl. When they see Aomine, people know.

His parents. His friends. They have to know too. They must feel it. But none of them ever say it. They all pretend nothing’s going on and the birds fly away. And Aomine’s left there in the cage. In the pit. Trapped in a prison of his own making, trapped by what’s in his own heart.

He doesn’t explain to Tetsu what had happened between him and Kagami after he’d revealed Kagami’s secret. He doesn’t tell them about their fight or how he’d yelled and screamed that Kagami should have let him go and Kagami hadn’t budged. He doesn’t tell him how he’d clung to him, how he’d cried.  
  


“I wanna’ move back to LA,” he tells Tetsu. “Kagami won’t talk about it.”  
  


He’s got so much to say to him, but that’s all that comes out, because he can’t explain too much. Because they can’t talk about it, or what this is all really for.

He wants to go back to LA, but Kagami won’t discuss it, more concerned with why he’s bringing it up than he is with seriously considering it. He doesn’t even entertain the idea of what going back means.  


_‘I want to go back and he won’t listen, because we’re together, and if I go that means he’s coming with me. That’s how things are when you’re with someone you love more than anything else.’_    


That’s what had made him travel overseas for the first time on the last day of high school. That’s what had made Kagami come back with him.  


  _‘Your dreams are their dreams, and when they suffer, you suffer too. Where they go, you follow them, because they're worth more to you than what you leave behind. Don’t you fucking understand what this means, Tetsu.’_  


“You seem troubled, Aomine-kun,” Tetsu says, but he hesitates in the middle, and suddenly Aomine is filled with hot bitter fury.  


“You can say it.” Tetsu’s eyes lower. There it is.  “You wanted to say ‘trouble in paradise,’ didn’t you.”  
 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he denies, eyes steely when he meets Aomine’s gaze again, and Aomine lets out a bitter laugh, shaking his head.  
  


 _‘Yes you do,’_ he thinks. _‘Why don’t you just fucking say it. I know it’s why you never talk about us even though you know. I know you see the way we look at each other. I know you can’t_ stop _seeing it ever since I told you why Kagami came back from America with me. You know he didn’t join the NBA because he wanted to be with me, because he cared that much, because he_ loves me.’

Everything that he’s wanted to say for so long, that he’s wanted to grab Tetsu and scream into his face, ask him _why,_ all of it builds up inside him into a singular point of pain and disappointment.

 

_‘You know. So why don’t you just fucking say it.’_

 

“Shut up,” Aomine hisses. “You know what this is about, so don’t pretend you don’t. You’re the one who fucking told me about Kagami, for fucksake. I know you think about it, so why don’t you just fucking—” He cuts off and hurls himself away from the railing, hands in his hair.

_‘It’s why you won’t mention it. It’s why you won’t fucking look at us when we’re talking in the corner together. It’s why you just watch and don’t say anything when we’re playing one-on-one and can’t see anything but each other. Because if you acknowledge that you know the truth, you’ll have to pull away from us. If you pretend you’re oblivious, you can keep being our friend.’_

And that’s what he can’t stand, that Tetsu will only be his friend if he’s the Aomine Daiki that he remembers, the one he pretends to be for the rest of the world. Not the Daiki that loves Kagami with all his heart.

_‘But why don’t you say it. Why don’t you just say it when I get too soft, tell me I’m distasteful. Why don’t you tell me how pathetically obvious I am. When you see that look on my face, why don’t you tell me to keep it private. Why don’t you just do it.’_

It’s no good. This is still something they can’t talk about. He’s never confronted Tetsu about this, never demanded a response from him, never heard what he thinks about all of it. He’s let him pretend that conversation never happened, let him pretend that he never told him that he and Kagami are lovers. He’s let Tetsu pretend that he and Kagami are nothing. That this means nothing.

Quietly, he manages to whisper, “Why don’t you just say it, Tetsu.” He feels his heart start to beat and flutter up in his throat already. “After all this time, why not just get it over with.”

And as he stares at his old friend’s face, he feels a rift opening up between them again. Can’t reach his fist bumps. Can’t catch his passes.

Kuroko is silent, staring back at him unblinkingly. Aomine waits, he waits for a long moment, feeling his heart tear apart as he waits for him to say something — but he doesn’t.

 

Aomine turns around. “Whatever, forget it,” he breathes, and an endless blackness opens up inside him.

 

. . .

 

   By the time they get home, both of them are pissed.

 

Aomine’s still upset about that other business, and Kagami is mad that he’d spent the rest of the party being a complete dick.

He’d nagged him all the way back and pestered him about what happened earlier, trying to figure out what his fucking problem is and why he’s so cranky — _‘Were you fighting with Kuroko again?’ —_ but he eventually let him alone, leaving him to stew.

When Aomine goes to bed, Kagami doesn’t follow, and after laying under the sheets and replaying the day’s events, really all he wants is to be comforted. Wants to stop thinking about it. Because this isn’t supposed to hurt.

He starts to feel a little bad for dragging Kagami into his mood, wishes he could embrace him, hopes that when Kagami comes in to go to sleep he doesn't turn his back to him.

He waited for such a long time that he must have drifted off at some point, because when he next opens his eyes, the clock shows it’s the small hours. Kagami still isn’t in bed.

Aomine slowly sits up, stares at the empty place next to him, and then gets up. He opens their bedroom door, pads down the hall, and sees that the light is on in the kitchen. Kagami’s still up, standing at the counter with a glass of water. He must have just turned off the TV.

Aomine stops there and scratches his stomach. “Are you coming to bed?” he murmurs. Kagami doesn’t turn around, but he sees his fist clench on the countertop. It wells up inside of him again, harsh and sudden.  
  


     “Kagami,” he tries.              _‘Let’s go back—’_

 

“Okay look—” Kagami cuts him off, turning around, and his expression is dark. “I want to know what the hell is up.”  


“The fuck are you talking about,” he denies immediately, closing back up.  


This dark ugly thing is blowing up inside him, a toxic balloon, choking his heart, his lungs, his throat, his mouth — and Kagami _knows—_

“You’re fucking pissing me off, acting so fucking suspicious,” Kagami growls, growing in volume. “Whatever’s going on, why don’t you just fucking spit it out already!”

“What the hell, Kagami, I didn’t do anything!” Why the fuck was he ready for a fight in the middle of the night, the second Aomine walked into the room?

“I know you fought with Kuroko!” he accused, and there’s this edge to his voice then, something wild and desperate. “He told me you’re still upset about wanting to go back to California!”

 _‘Tetsu said that?’_ he thinks for one second, mind blank, and then he grits his teeth.

“Who fucking cares about what Tetsu said?!” he shouts. “Lay off, okay?! God Kagami, why the fuck are you always on my case! Why don’t you stop being so fucking annoying and just leave me alone!”

He regrets those words the second they leave his mouth but he can’t take them back, he has to watch the way Kagami’s eyes go steely and his jaw sets. They stare at each other in strained silence for a second.

Finally, low and gravelly, Kagami muttered, “Talk to me about what’s bothering you instead of taking it out on me.”

Head down in contrition, Aomine stares at his feet. He didn’t come out here to fight.

He’s grateful for the show of patience instead of Kagami hitting back, so to speak, and escalating things into a shouting match. He didn’t want to fight with Kagami. He didn’t even know what the fuck he was yelling at him for — but Kagami’s always been like that. He’s a hothead, but he’s soft-hearted, and in those moments when Aomine’s breaking down, when he's really hurting and lashes out, when he’d _punched_ him, he doesn’t hurt him back, he shows him compassion. That’s Kagami.

“Nothing’s going on, you’re being a worrywart,” he amends, voice soft in apology.

Kagami tones down some of the intensity then, shoulders slumped. “What’s all this stuff about you wanting to move then?” he murmured, almost helplessly. “Aomine, what the fuck am I supposed to do when you keep saying this? What am I supposed to think?” He brings a hand to his nose and mouth for a second as he tries to get out the next words. Aomine stares, not understanding until Kagami speaks.

“Are you… You tryina’ break up or something?” he tries, so quiet that it’s almost a whisper.

 _Break up._ That’s only something you can do if you’re together, and they are. They’re at home together. They’re lovers. They’re boyfriends. The pit is gone. Tetsu isn’t there with those unreadable hollow eyes. There’s no knife of betrayal and rejection in his heart. Just Kagami, eyes shining like stars, Kagami, always there with his arms open.

It’s just them, and when they’re alone, they’re something real. Break up.

 

“Break up?” he repeated numbly.

 

“...” Kagami turns his face away, Aomine can see the knot in his throat, the way his chin starts to pinch. He glances to Aomine again and then puts his hand to his face, looking away.

“Hey, no,” Aomine hears himself say, can see himself reach out, and he doesn’t know when he’d stepped forward, but Kagami’s right in front of him, he can see the twist of his mouth, the way he bites his lips and avoids his eyes.

His life is an endless series of moments like this. Hurting Kagami and then watching the damage it causes, the sting in his face, the pain in his eyes. He's really fucked up bad this time, because look at him. Look at how much it hurts Kagami to even think that Aomine’s drifting away. Finds it too much. Wants to split up.

It surprises Aomine, frightens him almost. Look at the pain in his face. The pain he turns away from day after day. This thing Kagami doesn’t want to let him see because he knows that’s what Aomine does when he opens up, _pulls away—_  


“No,” he denies softly, voice wrenched.  
 

His hands are frozen there, unable to reach out and stop this moment of horror. He’s unable to tear his eyes away from him, can’t stop watching him break apart in front of him. 

Kagami’s head bows, bangs covering his eyes. His voice is practically a whisper, worn so thin. “We never talk about it, but I know it’s hard,” he murmurs, and Aomine feels a lump rise in his throat too. “It really sucks sometimes. I know that you… that it’s hard for you.” Aomine brings a hand up, wants to run his knuckles along Kagami’s cheek, but he just stares at him, his heart twisting in his chest.  


“If you wanted to start again,” he breathed, “If… If that’s what this is, you can be honest.”  


That’s the moment it first occurs to him. Even though he’s lived this way for so long, this thing only existing in their house, it’s never crossed his mind to walk away from it. Like a child yet to encounter death, he’s never even considered that he might lose this. That this thing he has with Kagami might end. That they might break up. No matter how dark and horrible and ugly things got, he’s never imagined the possibility that this wasn’t just going to keep going on this way—  
  


He’s never wondered if Kagami… if _Kagami_ would walk away.  


Aomine starts shaking his head, but Kagami keeps going, so quiet and pitiful, “If it makes things easier—”  


“What?” he blurted, voice high with something like panic and frustration. “Kagami, you jackass! It’s not like I meant I wanted to move alone.” Kagami shuddered with a sigh, head hanging. “I meant that you’d come too of course! What the fuck else does _‘let’s move’_ mean? It means you and me find a place!—”

Kagami comes back for round two, eyes shining with hurt and confusion, making Aomine wither with guilt. “What are you running away from, did you get someone pregnant? You hate your job?” he guesses, flailing wildly for something, anything, an explanation that Aomine won’t give him—   “Did you have a fight with your parents?”  


“No.” Aomine breaks their gaze.  


Kagami stands there and heaves, staring at him. “Is this about your talk with Kuroko,” he pinpoints.  


_“No!”_ Aomine shouts.  


What talk. They didn’t talk. They didn’t say anything. Even in all that mess of pain, neither of them had said it.  


When that didn’t make Aomine explain either, grasping for straws, Kagami helplessly wonders, “Did _I_ do something?”

“No,” he denies at once, and that’s what breaks his heart. That's when the guilt consumes him, because it's not Kagami. It's all him, all his fault, Kagami never did anything except love him no matter how much of a dick he was—   


“No.”  


Voice wrenched with frustration, Kagami tries, “I don’t get what’s changed, I don’t get what’s going on—”

“Nothing,” he refuses gently. _It’s not you. Don’t worry. It’s not you._  “I’m just thinking too much.” Kagami sighs, running his fingers through his hair. He looks so tired. So worn down.  


“You should be nicer to Kuroko. I think you hurt his feelings.”  


Is he supposed to feel _grateful_ that he still associates with them even though he knows? He never rejected them outright but he’d never encouraged it. Who knows what he’s thinking inside. And he sure as hell wouldn’t say it.

“He didn’t mean it,” Kagami says, face drawn with concern, eyebrows pulled down. “Whatever he said, he didn’t mean to piss you off. He’s worried about you.”

“Whatever.” He doesn’t want to talk about this.

“He’s a good guy. He’s your friend. You don’t have to push him away.”

And he can’t say anything, because he’s hurting too bad. There’s this thing inside him that can’t take the rejection, cries out for approval and then withdraws in bitterness, too afraid. He can’t face Satsuki. He can’t face his mom or his dad. Tetsu, the one person who knows, turns his face away, stabs him in the back — _They’re supposed to be proud of me._

Kagami, they’re alone together and Kagami is there under the kitchen light, staring him in both eyes, wide and searching. Dumb handsome face. Pimples and freckles and eyebrows. Gross American who stands up to pee. Christmas cake. Rival, partner, lover. Fire jumpsuit. Dick rice. Pants with a basketball on each ass-cheek. Homemade lunch.  
  
If he's lost everything, he still has Kagami. When he's old, when he can't hold the basketball anymore, who's going to love him, who's going to be there— He's the only one that Aomine can't push away. Can't walk away from. Can't shut out. Can't let go. There's no way not to love someone like Kagami.

“You scare me when you get like this,” Kagami confesses, taking a step towards him. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking.” He puts his hand up to Aomine’s face, follows his cheek when he hangs his head. He brushes his ear, his hair, comes close to him, that’s Kagami, arms always open.

Break up. He doesn't want to break up. If Kagami were to pull away from him, he doesn't know what else to do. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do with a life that has no basketball and no Kagami.

“Nothing’s wrong between us.” Aomine places a hand on Kagami’s neck, pulling him in. Kagami immediately embraces him in return. There’s something nervous about it, the way they hold each other, like they both think the other might let go.

It takes him back to the first time, when they were young and new to each other, still shy and sweaty-palmed when they held hands in secret. It takes him back to the first time they whispered to each other that they wanted to try doing it — sitting up in bed, browsing the internet together, a stupid google search, _‘how to get ready to have gay sex—’_  It takes him back to visiting the pharmacy together for supplies, takes him back to the first time, so flustered and eager, so slow in their fumbling attempts to not make it hurt each other— excited smiles when they managed to lock together after a lot of practice—

It takes him back to that day in the airport.Standing there in a whirlwind and not feeling afraid because he knew where he was going, knew it was all gonna’ be worth it. It takes him back to the first night he ever felt that incredible sky-high rip-your-heart-out rush of _love, love, love—_ because Kagami felt the same. It takes him back to the first time they were _‘us.’_ The first time Kagami defeated him and all of a sudden he  _knew._

“I know it’s hard for you,” Kagami repeats, like he’s trying to apologize for something, like he’s trying to say sorry that he’s always been stronger than Aomine, sorry that he ended up hurt even though Kagami’s the one who gave up everything to be here. “I—”

“I’m not trying to break up,” he interjects. “Stop getting such shitty ideas,” he murmurs into Kagami’s hair, sliding his hand up to the back of his head. “Nothing’s wrong between us. I swear.”  
  


_‘You’re the one person I won’t push away. The one I’ve looked for. I'm not gonna' let go. Never, never, never. If I’ve lost everything at least I always have you. That's all that matters.'_   
  


       Tokyo springtime. Birds on the roof.

 

“Okay,” Kagami says as they part, with something like relief. “Okay.”

 

He’s standing there in his sports pants with the racing stripes down the side and his sleep t-shirt that says _‘ball is life.’_ That damn ring is around his neck, glinting in the kitchen light, _you can wear his ring but not mine—_ His eyes, warm and glowing, hopeful, lit up with something tender.

_‘You came back even though you knew we could never be together here. You came back even though you had to let go of the one thing you loved most — basketball. You came back.’_

They stand there in the kitchen and gaze at each other, and his heart is open like a flower in a blaze of sunlight. He never knew he could love another person so much that he feels like he’ll break from it.  


     “Let’s watch Space Jam,” Aomine whispers.  


They settle on the couch together a few hours shy of sunrise, each with a bowl of ice cream, and watch their comfort movie, subtitles on for Aomine’s sake. Aomine lays on the sofa and Kagami’s splayed across him, head on his chest.

Kagami’s laughing.

Aomine still can’t really follow the English hardly at all, especially considering the cartoon character voices, but Kagami laughs and laughs. The aliens, funnily enough, each match the colors of the Kiseki no Sedai, and Kagami teases him each time the blue one, Blanko, does something stupid.

Basketball, Bugs Bunny, and Michael Jordan — and Kagami’s laughing.

 

  “Sorry for exploding,” Kagami whispers once they’re in bed together.

 

Sometimes, when his throat closes up in a room full of people, Kagami standing there looking so perfect and the words bubble up, that’s what Aomine wants to do. Take this thing that only exists in their apartment and escape the cage with it, pop the bubble, blurt out the words right there, in the street, on the rooftop, in front of Mom and Dad, on the balcony next to Tetsu, make Tetsu listen, make him face it, and Satsuki too, and his former teammates—  


Kneel down and pour his heart out at the feet of an angel, put a halo on his finger.  


   That’s what he wants to do is explode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray.  
> I've been for a walk on a winter's day.  
> I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.
> 
> California dreamin' on such a winter's day.
> 
> —The Mamas & The Papas


	11. Chapter 11

     One afternoon, he goes outside the police box and he can hear screams.

 

They continue, going on and on in the distance, and as he tries to pinpoint their direction, people start coming up to him. _Dog attack —_ there are dogs loose in the nearby park, aggressive vicious dogs, they’ve bitten a man in the park, they’re attacking a man, _help, god, someone help—_

Aomine alerts the officer on duty that he’s going to answer the call, and lets a few women lead him to the park.

As they cross the street, he can immediately see the dogs running loose, two tosa dogs, one brown, one black. They’re roaming around the park, jumping at people, snapping, and chasing those who run.

He tells the girls to stay back and crosses the road, and then freezes up for a moment as the dogs converge on a man right before his eyes. They bite into his pant leg and drag him off his feet, pulling him to the ground. The guy’s arms go up and he shouts in surprise, writhing as one rips at his leg and the other tries lunging for his head.  


_‘Oh shit—’_

 

Aomine runs towards them, crossing the lawn, _shouting,_ because those dogs were big and could do some serious damage. They were surprised enough at his approach that he's able to chase them away and help the guy get up, limp to a picnic table, and climb up on it. He stands there panting, and hits his radio.

“This is Junior Officer Aomine, we have two large dogs loose in the park. North side — backup requested.” To be honest, he hadn’t been trained for this type of thing and he isn’t exactly sure what to do. “As far as I can tell, some citizens have sustained injuries.”  Yeah, no shit, that guy's leg is fucking bleeding, and Aomine would stay with him to question and care for him while he's hurt, except the dogs are on the move, and had probably already bitten others before he’d arrived. He shouldn't let them out of his sight, not until he gets some help out here.

“Message received, officer — We’re sending the fire brigade out with a hose until we can get the animal unit called.”

Aomine spends the meantime trying to corral the dogs away from the people, but it’s hard to do, because they frequently separate and descend on others who have come to try and help him scare the dogs with sticks. They’ll snap and try to bite the person, and follow them as they retreat, relentless.

Aomine’s not particularly afraid of the dogs themselves, but the whole atmosphere of the situation, all the screaming, the fear of those around him, it has his heart racing, and he knows he’s running completely on adrenaline.

The dogs mostly avoid him, trotting ahead some distance and weaving back and forth. Every time they pass a person, they get agitated and try to bite again. Aomine has to wonder what’s wrong with them, whether they’re trained to fight and have been provoked by something, or if their owner has let them loose and sicced them on someone, or if they’ve got _rabies—_

He does get a little scared when the dogs get close to him, they’re _big —_ and when he overtakes one and tries to keep them away from one lady, he gets bit, _hard—_

Aomine's been in fights before. He's played basketball his whole life. He knows what it's like, the moment where your brain turns off and your body acts for you in a moment of instinct, whether it be fear, rage, a drive to win, or some instinctual struggle for survival. He's experienced it before, but he doesn't remember ever reacting quite like this.

Maybe it's because he hadn't expected it to hurt that bad, the sharp bony teeth digging into his hand, piercing his skin, ripping his flesh — it felt like his hand was being crushed, crunched, _shredded,_ and of course, he immediately yanks back in protest, but the dog just grips on. In the instant it takes for him to realize that he can't move, that the dog has its goddamn jaws clamped into his fucking hand and is ready to menace him like a scrap of meat, he goes into full fight-or-flight.

In a crazed burst, he balls up his free fist and  _hits_ it in the head, can feel his knuckles stinging, because it feels like he's just punched a rock. He winds up to do it again, but the dog has already yelped and released him. Wild-eyed, he swung at it again, and chases it off.

 

“Fuck,” he hissed, after standing there for a couple seconds, retroactively processing everything that had just happened, the deep bloody bite to the hand, going full-berserker and socking a dog in the head—  _"Fuck,"_ he snaps, because he'll be damned if those goddamn dogs are going to bite anyone else like that today.

He's still so worked up that it takes him a few more seconds to notice the siren. He looks up in relief as a fire truck pulls up and the fire officers get out and unload the hose from the side of the truck. Fucking  _finally._

As luck would have it, Kagami and some other juniors have been sent out, considering it’s not a fire and they don’t need the whole squad. He can immediately recognize him across the stretch of lawn, the brown hair setting him apart.

Kagami drags the hose out, pulling it across the grass, and Aomine remembers with a jolt that his boyfriend is very afraid of dogs. He looks like he's marching to his grave.

The dogs keep running from them, and to Aomine’s dread, they’re making their way towards the jungle-gym. He should have thought of that, tried to head the dogs off before they got that far, because it’s not like the playground is fenced off. He hadn't considered the very real possibility of the dogs reaching and terrorizing families. The damage those huge dogs could do to a child—

He hurries over, trying to keep his cool, because he can see that people are hiding in the playset. Families and _kids_ have put themselves on top of tables and other pieces of play equipment, trying to get out of the dogs' reach. They’re going to want reassurance, they don’t want to see him freaking out—

Aomine tries to herd the dogs away, back towards the grass, but they start to weave and separate again, and as he gets between one of them and the people, still some distance away, he sees Kagami approaching with the hose, hesitant and stony-faced.

The brown dog has had enough of his shit, because it’s barking at him, showing its teeth. “No!” he shouts, “Bad!” trying to intimidate it, because it will cower a tiny bit and put its ears back, but it keeps going at him, _vicious_ in its attempts to bite him. Every time it lunges at him Aomine’s heart jumps and he instinctively rears back.

 _“Shit,”_ he curses as the dog gets away from him and heads around him, back to the play area, where Kagami has cautiously approached the other dog with the fire hose.  


  Everything that happens next feels like it’s in slow motion.  


He spots the black one, and at the same time, a few yards away, he sees a kid who's somehow still wandering around on the ground instead of climbing the crowded playset. He's going in flustered circles, not knowing what to do in all the panic. Now that Kagami’s standing there on the woodchips, the boy spots him and heads towards him for help — the dog is heading for the kid, and they’re both closing on Kagami at once.

Aomine stops what he’s doing and _bolts_ towards them, but he feels like he’s trudging through syrup— knows he’s not going to be fast enough—

He watches Kagami’s face change, can see the exact moment he realizes what is about to happen, because his whole body stiffens up, he just stands there and watches the dog run at him, he fumbles the hose and it drops out of his hand —

 _‘C’mon Kagami—’_  Aomine has never experienced such a blind panic as he had in that moment, not even when the dog had bitten him, because this time, the dog is about to bite Kagami.   _'No, no, no, no, no—'_

He's never felt so helpless to stop something happening right before his eyes as he does now, watching the dog come up on Kagami, who can’t seem to react or do anything other than stare, frozen in terror.

What he watches next is surreal, Kagami’s big body, tall and built for basketball, frozen solid — it suddenly moves as though not of his own will. For a split second Aomine doesn’t know what’s happening, doesn’t know what Kagami’s doing, because when Kagami finally moves, it’s not to stumble back or retreat — instead he moves the wrong way.  


The slow motion breaks in a blur. He steps to the side, right into the dog's path.  


Then everything is happening too fast to keep track of. The dogs jumps, and Kagami's in front of the kid. The kid screams and balls up on the ground between Kagami’s feet and Kagami stands over him, his arms out, but he’s frozen again for that one moment it would have taken to hit the dog first and keep it from biting him. It sinks its jaws into his arm and holds on, making Kagami thrash against its grip — it just holds on and pulls, braced against the ground like Kagami is a fucking chew toy. The longer it bites, the more Kagami panics, and the more he panics, the more he thrashes around, and the dog just holds on tighter, throwing its head from side to side, as if to tear his flesh right off his bones.

Kagami doesn't scream, but the kid does, loud and piercing, and that's when the dog releases, immediately lunging at Kagami's feet.

In a flash, Kagami scoops the kid up, swinging him overhead as the dog snaps for his little legs. He stumbles over his own feet, trying to keep his balance as the dog's thick squirming body keeps going underneath him and through his legs as it jumps and bites at the boy. Kagami holds the kid to his shoulder, safely above his head so the dog can’t get him, and he manages to back up to the playset a step at a time as the dog keeps jumping in his face, barking nonstop. He lifts the kid over the rails to the dozens of hands that reach out—

Aomine vaguely sees the brown dog tear ahead of him to join its buddy, and as he watches the crowd take the screaming child into their arms, the black dog gets a grip on Kagami’s leg and yanks. A few tugs at the wrong times rip him off balance and onto the ground. Once he falls, it’s over.

The other dog joins, and they’re on him. He’s on his back in the woodchips and the dogs have got him.

Aomine can hear him them. Kagami is letting out panicked shouts, he’s _screaming,_ kicking his legs, arms over his face as he rolls and thrashes. He tries to shove the dogs off him, tries to roll over, tries to curl his body up and cover his head, but they're on top of him and he can't get away. 

The dogs are snapping and biting him, ripping him up, clamping their jaws down and dragging him along the ground, pulling at him like a piece of meat.

Kagami’s crying in pain — women are screaming, kids are bawling their eyes out, some men and teenagers are approaching with sticks, trying to drive the dogs off Kagami, but they’re not aggressive enough, they’re too timid to make the dogs disengage and they’re ripping Kagami apart, they’re _mauling_ him.

Aomine’s running, racing like he’s bolting for the far-end of the court, his footfalls heavy, heart in his throat, why is it taking so long, _why can’t he go faster,_ and with every step, the horrible sight comes into focus more and more, Kagami there on the ground, letting out frantic agonized screams as he’s torn to pieces.

He can barely slow down to a stop by the time he comes up on them, going in on the brown dog, the one by Kagami’s head. Aomine kicks the dog in the ribs as hard as he can. It releases with a loud yelp, stumbling back, and when it jumps at him again, he kicks the dog right in the face. He can feel the heavy crack against its skull as his foot crunches into its cheek and nose—

He shoves the other dog with his booted foot, and he fights them — they snap, and when they make to lunge at him, Aomine hits them with a tree branch someone else has abandoned, beating them every time they jump. He can’t even feel himself getting bitten, so frenzied and instinct-driven and _enraged_ that he just hits them in a fit of adrenaline, driving them back, _don’t fuck with me, I will fuck you up—_

He stands there next to Kagami and beats those vicious dogs until he can hear Kagami getting up, staggering away.

 _‘Get on the playset. Get on the fucking playset,’_ he thinks wildly, but as he spares a glance behind him, he watches Kagami stumble back to the hose he’d abandoned.

He picks it up and holds the nozzle tight as he snaps the safety valve back, and then he sprays the dogs with the water, directing the pressurized blast at their cowering backs and tails. The two of them drive the dogs away to a vacant area of the park, doing their best to keep them there.

He looks at Kagami. He’s panting, eyes blazing, so focused that it’s like he’s in the zone. God, everything’s red — his hair, his face too, and his clothes are soaked in patches. His face is a bloody mess, his hands are slick with it, and his uniform sticks to him every place he got bit, a wet red dot that oozes and spreads.  


He’s trembling, his back is straight and rigid, and Aomine can’t look away.  
 

The animal unit is there, the medical services, and the dogs are corralled and chased by officers who are patient enough to follow them with snares for several blocks until they are eventually nabbed. Aomine and Kagami escort the citizens who have been bitten to the ambulance. A sobbing mother approaches, clutching her son, and bows and bows to Kagami. He stands there and shakes, offering a red-toothed smile and a pat to the boy’s head.

Aomine doesn’t know how he’ll be able to face it later, how he’ll stomach this once everything calms down. Kagami’s a mess. He’s fucked up. The dogs had bit him on his legs and arms, he’d been bit in the torso. They’d bit his face.

He focuses on the work, he calms the remaining scared citizens while Kagami takes care of the fire truck, winding up the hose. Parent after parent comes to thank them, but he can't focus. Aomine can feel the wounds to his own forearms and his leg where he’d been bit, a sore sting, sticky with old blood, and when he walks up to Kagami, he can see he was much worse. He was bitten really bad. The dogs had bit him in the fucking face. They latched onto his sides and arms and legs and dragged him. There are tear tracks through the blood and sweat on his face, and that mess of blood on his cheek is crusting over in places, still glistening.

He reports to his commanding officer. He’s let off duty to see to his injuries, and he and Kagami go with the ambulance and wait in the emergency room to be tended to with the other bite-victims. Everyone gets a Tetanus shot, because they’re not sure if the dogs had been rabid or if they’d just been aggressive dogs. What he is sure of is that they’ll be put down after an attack like that. There’s no way those animals are suitable as pets.

Kagami hasn’t really said anything since they’d left the park. He put his head back against the wall in the waiting room with his eyes closed until he’s called. Aomine stays with him while they’re bandaged up, and he can’t deny the deep sense of dread building in his gut, Kagami’s so quiet—

Kagami’s worst bites are the ones on his face, his cheek badly torn. As the nurse wipes the blood away, Aomine can see all the individual tooth marks, brow, nose, lip — and his cheek, fuck, the flesh is gouged back, almost popping through completely to the inside of his mouth in one place. As he removed his shirt and rolled up his pant legs so the nurse could see and clean the bites, Aomine grit his teeth.

They’d tried to take chunks out of him. Luckily the thick cloth of his uniform had blunted most of the damage, but his arms and legs and side were still full of puncture wounds, tooth marks where the dogs had bit into him and gripped, dragging him. Each one is a red circle of thorns surrounded by a deep bruise.

Aomine had been bitten too, his hand is really sore, but he was in nowhere near as bad a shape as Kagami. Even the guy the dogs had attacked originally, yanking him around a little, he hadn’t gotten it as bad either. Kagami needed stitches in his face, some in his leg, and couple here and there on his side where the teeth had sunk in deep. The dozens of others are taped over with gauze pads. Aomine just has some fucking cuts that need cleaning and bandages that get seen to while Kagami’s in the other room getting _sewn up._

When the nurse goes after wrapping his cuts, and after waiting until he’s let back in with Kagami, Aomine approaches him slowly. He spares a glance for the black jagged line on his face, pulling the side of his mouth unnaturally, but mostly he just tries to catch Kagami’s eye, cautiously tries to get closer, because Kagami’s so quiet that he doesn't know what to say to him. The eerie sense of calm raises the hairs on his neck.

Kagami has his knee up, foot on the bed, and just as Aomine is trying to say something, Kagami grits his teeth, his face pinching angrily. Aomine swallows and stares at him as his hands suddenly fly to his face and he heaves like he’s going to throw up—

He stares, heart in his throat, watching as Kagami doubles over, and what he hears on Kagami's next breath makes him realize with a sharp and painful jolt that he's  _crying,_  his whole body squeezing with it, clenching and shuddering with each inhale.

He knows it’s the shock wearing off, it’s just Kagami coming down from the adrenaline and what had to have felt like a near-death experience. He knows how scared Kagami is of dogs, so much so that he'll cower from _tiny_ ones. He knows he was attacked by one back in the states as a kid, with a scar on his ass to prove it, but he'd never really thought about the fact that he'd never seen Kagami around a big dog before, never wondered what his reaction would be.

Aomine can’t imagine the terror Kagami must have felt in that moment, the dogs on top of him, pinning him there — and he shouldn't be surprised at the emotional outburst, because lots of people have meltdowns following moments of acute stress, _hours_ after everything’s over. Rationally, Aomine knows this, but personally experiencing it, he feels like his heart his breaking, seeing Kagami like that.

He puts a hand to Kagami's shoulder and rubs him. He would have gone to hug him, but anyone could walk by. _Cage, cage, cage,_ at any time, any circumstance, no matter how dire, how important, any place outside their home, they are nothing.

Kagami’s crumpled up and he’s not even that loud about it, but he’s _weeping_ so bitterly that Aomine has to struggle to breathe past the horror of it, tries to think of what he’s supposed to do— but he can't remember. Doesn't know how to comfort Kagami, doesn't remember if he's ever seen him cry in all the years he's known him. Aomine’s seen him close to tears, seen him choked up, seen his eyes glow, but no matter how bad the fight, how hard the day, how hard the life, Kagami holds his head up and carries on.   
  


But now, his body’s shaking like it’s going to break apart.  
  


Aomine wants to hold him, wants to hurt with him, wants to reach out and take his face in his hands so he tell him, _‘I was so fucking scared. They were biting you and I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything, fuck, I was so scared.’_

And his throat closes up, because he can't reach out. Kagami's crying right next to him and he can't lift his damn arms to reach out and hold him. Can't open his mouth to tell him that it's all over now, everything's going to be okay now.

Kagami sobs, _pained angry frightened sobs_ ripping through his clenched teeth. _“Fuck,”_ he chokes out, breath hitching with so much frustration and exhaustion and pain, pain, pain—   “Fuck,” he weeps.

And Aomine caves in on himself for a second with the force behind the bubble in his throat, he hurts with him, he wants to embrace him so they can comfort each other, _it’s okay, it’s over now, I’ve got you, you can cry— I love you, I love you, I’m so glad you’re okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you—_  
  


  But all that comes out is tears.  
  


A kid, ripped out of the water, saved an instant before drowning. He should be happy to be rescued, but the first breath of life he takes, he lets out in a scream, a pitiful wail. All he can do the second he can breathe again is cry. A drunk, told to go home, but he doesn’t know where to go, doesn’t know where he is, needs to be held up because he can’t stand on his own. Drinking tea in a stranger’s house, staring out at the cherry trees. A man torn apart by dogs—

A lost man. A crying child. No time to be in love like springtime in Tokyo— the job he never wanted, the man he never planned on being, the nice policeman, he can’t be that person and love Kagami at the same time. The person he is when he’s out in the world, and the man who’s given his heart to Kagami, they can’t exist together, and Aomine doesn’t know what to do with himself, doesn’t know how to reach out and help him.

Kagami’s always been better at comforting others. Better at reaching out. He’s always been so much stronger than Aomine is, but look at him, shattered into a million pieces, crying his eyes out— and if the strong one is shattered, Aomine has been obliterated. Can’t move and can’t react because his heart is so broken that the dust could sand the beach.

The boyfriend Kagami could be proud of, the person that could deserve all the love he’s always shown him, Aomine can’t be that guy— can’t do anything for Kagami in his moment of agony and terror. Because loving him is not enough. It’s not enough if he can’t do anything with that love. If he can’t reach out. If he can’t comfort. If he can’t protect. If he can’t do any of the things that one should be able to do with love.

A spark of frustration spills the tears from his eyes, because his heart is in a cage and it’s not _fair, not fair, not fair._ Why doesn’t he embrace him, huh? Why doesn’t he tell him he loves him, why doesn’t he tell him that he was scared too, that he feels that pain— why doesn’t he put his arms around him and let Kagami cry, why doesn’t he cry with him— Who cares who sees them? Who fucking cares who sees him kiss Kagami’s head, who cares who sees him rock him and pet his hair as if they were alone in their kitchen? Who cares, as long as he's able to comfort Kagami and show him he loves him—

He could do it, if he wanted. He could reach out and hold his face in his hands, he could put their foreheads together and reassure him. He could make him pick up his face, flushed and wet and puffy, nose running, eyes pink with tears, and he could tell him he loves him. Could kiss his quivering lips.

But as they sit there together, Kagami just stays like that, collapsed, hiding his face, and Aomine feels like there is a chasm of distance between them. The thing closing his throat is too big. Impassable, even in such a moment as this.

“Fuck,” Kagami continues to curse into his hands, growing quieter and quieter, weeping silently, and Aomine can’t make his throat work, not even to tell him it’s okay, not even to tell him to lift his face and breathe, _look at me, look at me, Kagami, I’ve got you—_

Aomine scrubs hard at his eyes, sniffing viciously, and he slumps against Kagami for a second, lets his head touch his shoulder. He grips him there and shakes him, presses a hand on the top of Kagami’s head and ruffles his hair. _It’s okay,_ he tries to convey, but it’s not enough. Falls so pathetically short.

Kagami keeps his head on his arm for a long time. Even when he starts to sniff, his breath starting to level out, he stays like that. He stops whimpering, stops shaking, but he sniffs and sniffs. He keeps his head down, covering his eyes. Won’t show his face. Won't reach out to him for comfort. Won't open himself to him.

Aomine tries to swallow the dry clenching pain in his throat, scrubs his eyes with his wrist.

Homemade lunches. A life that’s good, a life that’s easy. Watching Space Jam on the couch. Joking about sex. Sitting on the beach. Strawberry Christmas cake.  
  


   Flower petals in his hair. Tokyo springtime.  
  


Never turns away, never too tired, never too bored. He’s never loved anyone the way he loves Kagami.

And in the end, Kagami won’t look at him. Won’t show him those tears or cry on his shoulder. They can’t lean on each other in that moment of pain. He can’t look Aomine in the eye. Too intimate, too honest.

   What is he going to see there anyways. The thing they can’t say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd, goodnight, see you soon.
> 
> —Ryan Adams


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No doubt, to live and die in LA.  
>  California, what you say about Los Angeles, still the only place for me — that never rains in the sun and everybody got love.
> 
> —2PAC

By the time they get home, it’s around eight.

 

They don’t talk about how they’d cried together. They don’t talk at all. Aomine tries, but Kagami isn't very responsive, drifting along with this vacant look on his face and a slump to his shoulders. Aomine's scared shitless, so he tries to snap him out of it, tries to force his attention, but Kagami is silent.

Eventually all he can figure to do is try to take care of him and get him through the rest of the night. Maybe tomorrow will be better. He hopes it is. He doesn't know what to do otherwise.

Aomine warms up some food, but Kagami doesn’t have any appetite. He leads him to the bathroom and helps wash him, scrubbing around the plastic-covered bandages. There's blood in the drain, rinsed away where it had caked on his back and sides. Aomine soaps Kagami's thick hair and then carefully frames his fucked up face, blocking the water from touching it as he guides him to tilt his head back under the spray.

Kagami sits on the stool and stares forward, eyes lidded. He lifts a hand to his face, gingerly pressing his fingertips in around the bridge of his nose, the orbit of his eye, then tenderly sinks them into his cheek. Aomine watches Kagami's throat tense, the way the stitches strain when he clenches his jaw. His expression is calm, but his mouth is twisted down on one side, dragged that way by the cinched flesh of his cheek in a sneer that will be permanent once it heals. He ran his finger over it back and forth, and let his arm fall, a wet slap against his leg.

Then he just fucking... stares into space.

Aomine swallows and tries not to think about it — Kagami’s going to have scars. His face is messed up. Some of the bites weren't so bad and probably wouldn't even show after a month or so, but Aomine didn't need to be a doctor to know that his cheek was going to have permanent scar tissue. It's too badly marked to have a chance of fading. Same with the bite under his eye and the deep cut in his lip. It’s always going to be there. That moment of being ripped up is never going away.

He won't be able to avoid looking at it unless he never looks at Kagami again. Coming home from work, he's going to see his cheek and his crooked mouth, waking up in the morning, he's going to kiss those lips. During sex, during basketball, he'll never escape this twisted expression of pain in Kagami's face. 

They go to bed when Kagami won’t touch more than a few bites of soup, and once he’s tucked them in, Aomine hesitantly approaches him, puts his arm around Kagami, a hand running up and down his back. He wants to talk to him, almost wishes Kagami would start blubbering again so that he could comfort him, but Kagami doesn't reach out to him.

He doesn't reach out, and he doesn't cry, but at least he doesn't pull away, so Aomine keeps petting his back, inches closer and closer, embracing him gently. Kagami swallows and closes his eyes, and they fall asleep like that.  
  


       Aomine has a bad dream.

 

He’s sitting in the park with all his friends. Kagami’s there, glowing in the sun. Petals are falling and he's so perfect in that moment that he shines like a star.   _Kagami-kun is my light,’_ Tetsu says, and Aomine is smiling. He’s glowing, love beaming out of his face.

“Kagami,” he says, and as Kagami turns to face him, this beautiful ray of light glows out of him, it's as if the sun is at his back and is illuminating him from the inside. He's so perfect. His face breaks in a radiant smile the second he lays eyes on Aomine. Their hands touch.

Aomine shows Kagami to everybody, that wonderful glow. _Love, love, love —_ the door in his heart is open, laid out like the first blossom of spring.  
  


 _‘The bigger the light, the darker the shadow.’_  
  


And then the pit opens up, dark and roaring — and then they’re running, him and Kagami, the monsters at their heels are screaming and howling, digging in their claws. They get him, hook into his legs, break his back, and he can’t get up again.

Kagami stops running, tries to pull him to his feet, won't let go of his hand. He’s holding onto him, but the pit opens up and Aomine can’t escape, can’t escape, it wants him—

“Let go!” he screams, even though he clings onto Kagami in terror, _don’t let me go, don’t let me fall in, don’t let them get me, you’re all I have—  
_

He sinks and Kagami won’t let go of him, holding onto his hand. He’s towed up to the ridge of the abyss, dragged there by Aomine’s weight, and when he gets to the edge, he still doesn’t let go. He braces his feet and pulls, pulls, _heaving_ backwards—

 _“No,”_ Aomine breathes, staring up at him as he dangles by his hand. He feels himself get heavier and heavier, and then suddenly he drops — and as he stares overhead, he sees Kagami fall in too, headfirst, and they’re swallowed up in an instant.  
  


And in the darkness, he loses Kagami’s hand.  
  


           Aomine opens his eyes, stares at the ceiling.  
  
  


He realizes what had stirred him from sleep when Kagami thrashes next to him all of a sudden, his legs jerking under the blankets as he wakes up. He pushes out in front of him with a shout, and then sits up, shuddering.

Aomine rears up and grabs him, puts his arms around him, holds his head. He’s never been like Kagami, can’t be the guy who rocks his lover when they cry, the one who hushes them and makes it all go away — but the instinct is there, _love him, comfort him,_ so he reaches out and holds on, he takes Kagami’s head in his hand and presses it to his shoulder, pushes his face onto Kagami’s hair. He squeezes him while he shakes and heaves for breath, doesn’t let him move, doesn’t let him go— if Kagami breaks into pieces, he’ll catch every little shard, every speck of dust—

“Fuck,” Kagami gasps, arms coming around Aomine’s shoulders, fingertips hesitantly digging in. Aomine's throat knots up, heart pounding as he pressed them together. 

He sits there with him and hugs him for some time, until Kagami’s breath has slowed, and then he eases them down onto the bed, pulls the blanket up to their shoulders again and lets his hand skate over Kagami’s hair, down his back, petting his head over and over.

“I’ve never been that scared,” he hears him murmur. Aomine tips his nose down a little, his face resting against Kagami’s forehead.

He hears a wet laugh and a sniff, and Kagami brings an arm up to wipe gingerly under his nose, his whole face tender and aching. “You probably think I’m pretty pathetic,” Kagami laughs, “I go into a burning building or a collapsed house, but when I see a dog, I lock up.” Aomine’s body curls around Kagami’s minutely, straining and closing in on him in denial.

“I could’ve run at least. I could’ve hit them — but I was too scared,” Kagami breathes bitterly. “To do _anything._  How’re you gonna’ look at me the same after that.”

Aomine felt tears build up in his throat, overwhelming him. Kagami’s zombie-like state after everything, his numb tired silence, his refusal to look him in the eyes, the way he’d hid his face as he’d cried in the hospital. He was humiliated. Felt that he couldn’t show that pain and weakness to Aomine or he’d turn away like always. Didn't feel like he could talk to him or reach out for comfort because Aomine had just seen him live through the worst day of his fucking life.

“I already knew you were scared of dogs, idiot,” he rasped, stroking through his hair to try not to cry. He can hear that Kagami's nearing tears and it's getting him choked up too.

“I couldn’t do anything, I was so scared,” Kagami ignored him, voice thick and wobbly. “I couldn’t think. They were on me, and I just—”

Aomine has Kagami’s head in his hands, his palms gentle on each cheek, tenderly cupping the one with the prickly stitches — he cradles his face the way he’d wished he’d done back in the emergency room. Maybe if he had, the thing between them wouldn't feel like it had smashed and impaled them both with the jagged broken shards. Maybe if he had this wouldn't feel like something they couldn't come back from.

He runs his thumbs along his temples, resting their foreheads together. “You rescued that kid.”

He’d seen it in Kagami’s face that he’d wanted to run, his gut reaction in front of those huge scary dogs was to get away, but he’d grabbed the kid before he’d thought to save himself. He was so… so brave.

They’re in the dark together and Kagami’s eyes were filled with this soft glow, like a fire burnt down to the embers. His face is filled with shame, his poor scratched-up face, like he thinks every time Aomine looks at him now, he’s going to remember the way he’d screamed, going to remember that moment of cowardice—

It’s true Kagami’s screams ring in his ears, it's burned into his corneas the way he'd kicked and thrashed around, and he doesn't think he'll ever forget the moment he got the dogs off him and he watched Kagami's hands fly to his face, the way blood was gushing over his hands — but the thing he can’t get out of his mind is Kagami flinging the kid up into the air, holding him above his head and stumbling along to avoid the jumping dogs.

Kagami laying on the ground in a daze, unable to move for several seconds even after Aomine got the dogs off him — Kagami getting up again after being ripped apart and standing there with the fire hose, eyes blazing.  
  


  He’s a hero. He’s an angel.  
  


His eyes are raw and puffy, his gaze is this pitiful thing, so hesitant to meet his own, and Aomine has never loved him more than he does in this moment. He slid his hand along Kagami’s face, his head. He smoothed back his bangs and pressed his mouth to Kagami’s forehead, kissing him for a long second.

Kagami sighs. “Interesting day at work for you though, huh?” he tries, sounding a little bit better. Aomine snorts. Sure as hell was.

Kagami’s eyes are red around the edges. He looks like a total wreck. “I like it when we’re on the job together usually,” Aomine murmurs, not taking his eyes off him for a moment.

“Never thought this would be the first injury I’d bring home from work,” he keeps trying to joke, but it’s so fragile, so paper-thin that Aomine can’t listen to it. Can’t listen to him try to act like it doesn’t hurt. “Figured I’d get a stupid burn or something.”

“What, and then get a fucking earful from me later?” Aomine hummed, stroking his face.  
  


“Earful of what?”  
  


“You’re not funny, Kagami,” he whispers.  
  
  
  
Kagami offers a weak smile, tries — but he can’t.  
  


  
       “C’mere,” Aomine breathes.  
  


Aomine was an only child and was spoiled by his parents. He’s always been given everything he asked for. The first time in his life he hadn’t gotten what he wanted was when no one would play basketball with him anymore, when no one _could —_ and even then, Kagami had shown up eventually and he’d gotten that too.

Kagami had come into his life and started spoiling Aomine too. Basketball, always basketball, because he’d take him on anytime. So Daiki had felt free to be picky, not interested in playing with others because it’s too boring, preferring to face Kagami instead. He hates vegetables and refuses to eat them, but the way Kagami cooks them is okay. He’s got his huge collection of basketball shoes cluttering their closet, but Kagami doesn’t say shit about it even though he still buys more to this day, more that he just puts in with the others and doesn’t wear. Aomine's taken these things as granted, he's just come to expect to be treated well because the people who really matter, Mom, Dad, Satsuki, Tetsu, those people never get fed up with him. He’s a lazy, entitled, cocky, troublesome jerk who gives Kagami endless shit, but Kagami just lets him have his way.

He’s always been spoiled. He takes what he likes — from his parents, from his teammates, his friends, from everybody, and he never gives back. And for the longest time he’s wondered what it is inside him that people see and think is worth bothering with. What’s there that’s worth spoiling. It's not like he returns the favor. 

Kagami’s the nice one. He’s selfless and giving in his own way, despite being only son to a rich father. He’s friendly and outgoing despite living on his own. He’s got this endless fire and determination and a real love of working as a team.

Kagami’s the nice one. He’s the one who comes to the rescue, the angel who shows up in the darkest hour and heals Aomine’s pain and loneliness, doesn’t care about how mean he’d been to him in the past, how much of a jackass he’d been, just as long as they could play together.

_Basketball, let’s play basketball — I can play basketball again. I can love basketball again._

Aomine never understood why bad things happened to good people. Here he is getting spoiled his whole life through without meriting that treatment, and Kagami is attacked by dogs, got his face ripped apart. It’s undeserved. That shouldn’t have happened to him. He should have escaped. He shouldn’t be in the cage with the monsters, shouldn’t fall into the pit with Aomine. He should have let go when he’d had the chance. He should have gone to the NBA.

_Why, why, why, why, why—_

“Thanks,” Kagami whispers once he’s exhausted, having wept every last tear into Aomine’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he croaks.

Aomine hugs him and the bubble grows. But he can’t say it, the thing he wants to say the most. Because in the end, he can't have what he wants.

 

. . .

 

The next day at work feels awful.  
  


He has to drag himself in and pretend that every step isn’t a dagger in his heart.

 _‘My boyfriend was mauled by savage dogs. I was right there, I saw it. I wasn’t fast enough to help him and he got bit in his face’ —_ this thing he can’t say to anyone. Something he carries in his heart, words in his mouth.   _‘My boyfriend was attacked by dogs. The man I love very much, I saw his face torn apart.’_

Life at home isn’t much better.  Kagami can't sleep through the night without waking up and shutting himself in the water closet. Aomine's heard him puking. The days go on and Aomine doesn’t know what to do.

Kagami is really down. It’s to be expected after what happened, but Kagami’s the type who bounces back. Aomine's never seen him get this affected by anything. He’s really not himself. He isn’t sleeping well and he’s in pain a lot of the time. Aomine’s been walking on eggshells.

“How’s your cheek?” he tries when they’re eating dinner. It’s strange to sit next to him like this in silence.

“Hurts,” is all Kagami mutters back. Aomine grunts in acknowledgement. Kagami’s sore, so he’s been taking pain-killers. His appetite's been better but he has to eat slowly, and he doesn’t talk much because his entire face is so sore. He limps around the house and doesn’t talk to Aomine hardly at all, doesn’t seem to want to see him.

Aomine doesn’t know what to do. He wants to try to comfort Kagami, wants them to get through this together, because it’s been hard on him too —  but Kagami's avoiding him. Wants nothing to do with him.

At first he tries not to take it personally and gives Kagami his space, but it really hurts him, to sit down next to Kagami and have him get up a few moments later. He even rolls away from him in bed. It’s what he deserves, a taste of his own medicine, because he’s done the same to Kagami for years when things get rough, but Kagami’s never done it back. It’s driving Aomine crazy, because he can see that Kagami isn’t coping with this well at all, and this is just another way their relationship can’t be like a normal one. They’re supposed to be able to comfort each other after bad things happen, they’re supposed to rely on each other for support. 

No, that’s not quite right. Whenever setbacks happened in Aomine’s life, Kagami _was_ there. Open arms, a shoulder to lean on, a loving heart — when Aomine thought his life was over, when he thought everything was falling apart, his budding career in America destroyed, when it was all gone he'd still had Kagami. But when has Kagami leaned on him. When has Aomine ever returned the favor.

And now that it’s time, now that it’s his turn to be there to console him, it’s like Kagami doesn’t want him to.

Aomine feels like he has to approach him gently, speak softly, like if he doesn’t, he’ll run away — but no matter how nice he tries to be, Kagami still seems humiliated, cuts conversations short, won’t look him in the face.

He knows that’s what it is, is humiliation, because he can see the way Kagami hesitates when he reaches out to him. He can see Kagami freeze, like he wants to accept his efforts and give in, wants to soak it up like he does with every other rare gesture Aomine initiates, but every time he tries to raise his head and look at Aomine, his eyes are uneasy, like a scared animal expecting rejection. Like he feels things are somehow different and is waiting for Aomine to pull away from him. Like he thinks if he reaches out for comfort, Aomine won’t close his arms around him.

The drunk. The kid pulled from the water— Kagami’s always been stronger than him. He’s always been better at comforting others than he is. Better at caring for him. Better at loving him. He’s always deserved so much better and so much more than Aomine can give, and that feeling, watching Kagami drift through the day on his own, avoiding him at every turn, it’s a knife in his heart.

His face, his poor sweet face, marred with scratches and scabs, and his sad eyes, each of them glowing like a melted candy cherry — just fucking look at him. Aomine’s never seen Kagami look so beaten down. And he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to reach out to comfort him. Doesn't know how to make him believe this is worth it like Kagami's always done for him.

“Wanna’ go jogging?” he says gently, nice and quiet. Kagami’s in the kitchen, screwing around pointlessly with some jars, rearranging the fridge again. When he speaks, Kagami pauses for a moment, like he’s considering it.

“No,” he murmurs. “I think I’ll stay in.”

Aomine’s getting desperate, because Kagami feels so distant that he doesn’t know what else to do. “Basketball later?” he tries.

Kagami is silent. That’s when he knows something’s really wrong. The hair raises on his neck and his face feels numb, his heart a heavy stuffy pounding between his ears.

“Kagami?” he rasps, shoulders slumping helplessly.

 

    _‘Are you trying to break up—’_

 

Kagami just shakes his head wordlessly, not even turning around, and Aomine swallows dryly, staring at his back for a moment before he can’t any longer. He gets his shoes and coat on and tries to deny what he’s refused to acknowledge the past few days.

Kagami’s taking this really hard. He’s been so quiet.

No, not quiet exactly. He doesn’t have that extra something that he usually has. That glow in his eyes, the thing he carries in his voice and his face and his smile — it’s… He can’t see it anymore. That light.

 

  
_Too dim._

 

Like he's finally, finally given up on the two of them.

 

He doesn’t know how long he wanders, feeling absolutely lost, because this is unbearable. He can’t go on like this. Kagami’s the one who’s always been there. If he loses his hand in the darkness— If he can’t feel him anymore, can’t find him— He doesn't know what he's supposed to do.

By the time he comes home, Kagami’s not in the kitchen. Aomine takes his shoes off and quietly walks through the house, checking their room. He finds him in the bathroom in just his shorts, staring in the mirror. He must’ve taken a bath, because his body is damp, his hair is wet, slicked back away from his forehead.

Aomine swallows, watches him looking at himself, the mangled black line holding his face together. “I called Dad,” Kagami breathes.

Something tightens, screws up so unbelievably tight inside him that the pain is like a vise. Is this the moment? The moment that Kagami stops hanging on? — _that he lets go at the edge of the pit and—_

“Said he’ll wire some money so they can fix it,” he says. “The scarring,” Kagami clarifies, eyes flicking down. He talks slowly, probably to keep from biting his tongue or irritating his sore face too much. Aomine feels something like relief, because for a second he’d thought maybe this was something Kagami just couldn’t get over, that it has him so messed up that he has to get away, that he just wants to go back home.

That he can’t go on.

Kagami hasn’t talked to him past one word answers in days, so now that he is, Aomine keeps his mouth shut, tries to understand why he’s saying this to him now.

“I think I want to,” he breathes, head drooping over the sink just a little. “I don’t wanna’ remember every time I see… see the bites,” he finishes. Aomine stares, lips parted.

"It'll be best, y'know... while they're still fresh. They'll be able to fix it better," he rambles, avoiding his gaze.

“Okay,” Aomine says. “I’ll come with.”

Kagami picks his head up a little, seeming reassured, almost like he’d expected Aomine to say something else, like he would tell him not to do it — or worse, to tell him to _definitely_ do it.

“... Do you think I should?” Kagami murmurs hesitantly. He’s so quiet, head hanging like he can hardly hold himself up. He’s nothing like the person Aomine knows; he’s a broken man.

Aomine’s face melts into a fond smile, because it’s Kagami, and why should he care if he's broken if he still loves all the pieces anyway — and it’s not like him to be romantic, but they say dire times bring out the best in people—

“Do it if you want,” he says, “but I say you’re fine however.”

Kagami can’t even manage a laugh, can’t even lift his mouth at the corner to smile. Can’t tease him for being sappy. And worst of all is that he still won’t look at him.

He does lift his head though, looks at himself in the mirror some more, twisted so he can look at his bad side, his cheek and the marks on his brow and mouth. Aomine moves behind him a little, looking over his shoulder. Kagami shuts his eyes when he comes into the reflection, inhaling deeply and then letting out a tired sigh.

“I’m gonna’ be one ugly motherfucker when these stitches come out,” he mutters, tries to laugh, but it’s bitter, choked.

Aomine inches in towards him from behind, slowly brings an arm around him, almost like he’s an animal that might lash out — a beautiful creature he loves with all his heart that keeps shying away from him, won’t let him hold him, won’t show him his pain. Because every time he’s tried in the past, Aomine’s shut that door, turned his face away.

“Scars are manly,” he denies.

Because it comes to him then that maybe that’s it. The scars bother Kagami and he thinks they bother him too — and they do. It’s true, the screams are still fresh in his mind, he still has nightmares about the whole thing, but it’s not like Kagami’s hard to look at. He’s not _disfigured,_ and Aomine doesn't cringe away from the sight of him.

He looks like a war survivor. They’re not even scars yet really, the wounds fresh and barely closed, still dark with scabs. He’s always been handsome, and when the swelling goes down and all of it starts to heal, he’ll just look like a bad boy with a tragic past. By middle age, he’s going to look like one of those rugged motorcycle-gang types. Aomine likes him just fine.

It’s not like he’s the type who thinks looks don’t matter. He’s always been a douche that way, so maybe he should be more surprised that this isn’t bothering him more. It’s probably because he knows in the back of his mind that they’re hero scars. If Kagami hadn’t been so brave, he might not have gotten bit like that, but he’d rescued that kid instead of saving his own ass.

In that way, it doesn’t bother him — because every time he looks at him, he still loves him. Despite everything, looking at him now is like he’s standing in the middle of LAX all over again, it’s like he’s seen Kagami’s face in the crowded airport, young and handsome, lit up in a smile, and knowing everything was going to be okay. 

“Manly,” Kagami repeats, tries to make it come out as a laugh, but it falls pathetically flat. Aomine puts a hand up to his face, gently guiding it towards his own, and gives his smooth cheek a tender kiss.

“Yeah,” he says, pulling away and putting a hand to Kagami’s shoulder, gripping it. “If you’re gonna’ do it, lemme’ know and I’ll take the day off work.”

He can see Kagami choke up, sees his eyes gleam and turn pink at the edges — glowing with emotion, bright like twin stars. There he is. How can he not love him.

Kagami nods, head dipping down. Aomine pats him on the back a couple times, and leaves him be.

 

. . .

 

Aomine finds Tetsu at the court, waiting on a bench.

Kagami probably hasn’t felt up to meeting him, but Tetsu knows about what happened, so Aomine updates him on how Kagami’s doing. It feels awkward, talking to him — he can’t deny he’s still kind of hurt about what happened at Kise’s place. He doesn’t know how to talk to him after that.

Tetsu eventually gets to the point. “Kagami-kun says you’ve been quite upset over our conversation.”

So they _had_ been talking. Aomine mumbled something unintelligible.

 _‘What conversation — and what the fuck does Kagami know about it anyways—’_ That’s what he wants to say, but Kagami’s in such a, dare he say it, _fragile_ state lately that Aomine finds it hard to be mad at him. He knows he worries Kagami, knows that he gets concerned about him. It irritates him that he’s always talking to Tetsu about him, but it comes from a place of care. He knows that deep down.

And Tetsu, he’s not mad at him either really. Just tired. He’s hurt and ashamed, bitter at being rejected by his best friend.

Tetsu says briskly, “I expect that this is difficult for both of us to talk about, Aomine-kun, but I’m concerned that if we don’t at some point…”  


_Teiko._ The hand held up, the fist falling away. _I can’t remember how to catch your passes—_  


“Yeah,” he rasps, closing his eyes. “Fine then. Say it.”  


“After we fell out in middle school,” Tetsu began, “Kagami-kun became my new light.” Aomine grit his teeth. For a second he tightens up with rage and hurt again, because why is Tetsu dragging it out. Why doesn’t he just say it and get it over with—

But that’s not how it goes. He continues and something starts to clench and weaken in Aomine’s chest.

“He was my light for a long time. But a light shines on everything around it — it cannot glow on a single point, from one source to its destination.” Aomine looks over at him, lips parting, and finds Tetsu staring at him, steady as always, impassive ice-blue eyes, calm gentle facial expression.

“And so, he is not only mine. Now, Kagami-kun is the light in Aomine-kun’s heart, and when two lights meet, that light can only grow stronger.”

Aomine is choking, feels pressure building behind his eyes and throat, tighter and tighter, and realizes then that Tetsu and Kagami must talk about it a lot. The thing they don’t say, the thing he's thought he couldn't open up to Tetsu about — Kagami has been open with Tetsu all along. Those two talk about it even though Aomine’s always thought that Tetsu never mentioned it.

“And I think,” he considers slowly, “if you feel that you… the two of you,” he clarifies, maybe a little awkwardly, but what does it matter— “If you feel that you cannot shine here, then you’re right about going back to America.”

Aomine stares at him speechlessly. Tetsu doesn’t care a thing about staring him right in the face, unblinkingly. “And though I will miss you, Aomine-kun, I will be glad,” he says firmly.

He holds out his fist. “I will be glad,” he repeats.  
  


Aomine numbly raises his own hand and bumps Tetsu’s fist.  
  


They sit there next to each other in silence for a long time, Aomine staring out over the empty court.  
  


    “But do you think Kagami-kun will say yes?” Tetsu inquires.  
  


“I dunno,” he hears himself say, shit, this whole conversation is surreal. He still can’t wrap his head around what’s happening. He should have figured Tetsu would know about it all already despite never having been told.

Because there’s no way he means just going back to LA. He knows about the other thing. He’s followed it to its logical conclusion and has guessed why Aomine wants to take him back there. He’s always known. And maybe that’s why it had hurt him so much before, to think Tetsu didn’t support him in the most important decision he’s ever made in his life.

That amazing moment, the rings, the kiss, the party, the start of his journey with Kagami, he wants Tetsu to see that. The best, most joyful moment of his life, he wants him to be there and to be proud of them. When the love beams out of his face and he shows Kagami off, he wants Tetsu to be proud.

“I dunno’,” he repeats, “but if he does…” He shifts on the bench minutely, legs squirming, hands in his jacket pockets. “If he does, will you… Are you… are you gonna’ come?” he tries, still barely able to verbalize it.

“If I am invited, Aomine-kun, I would be glad to attend,” Tetsu says demurely, hands in his lap like always. There’s that word again, the thing he can’t believe the most — glad.    _Glad!_

“Good,” he says, struggling to keep his voice steady. Part of it still seems daring, still seems like a risk, something he can’t say so openly, because Tetsu might shy away from it, might be made uncomfortable — but he forces the words out nonetheless.

“Cause who else is gonna’ be my best man if you don’t, Tetsu.”

Almost slyly, Tetsu says, “You may have to share with Kagami-kun, in that case.”

“Satsuki then,” he mutters. “Think she’ll come too? To see me be married?” he adds unsteadily.

“I think she will,” Tetsu considers. “But in any case, you can count on me to be there.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, feeling giddy, like his head is full of gas. He’d never thought he could have this kind of conversation with Tetsu. He’ll be glad. _He’ll be glad._ Tetsu said that.  
  


 _‘Kagami-kun is the light in your heart — and I’ll be glad.’_  
  


“Geez Tetsu,” he sniffs. _Thank you, thank you, thank you—_ “Your light metaphors are the gayest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“You are gay, Aomine-kun,” Tetsu murmurs quietly, almost gentle about it. He says it for the very first time, and he doesn’t turn away, doesn’t scoot to the far end of the bench.

 And Aomine laughs. He laughs and laughs and the tears fall.

 

 

_The one in front of the door._

_It was you all along, wasn’t it. Tetsu..._

 

. . .

 

Kagami went in for his surgery. His dad’s paying so they don’t have to worry about any of it.

It was all kind of scary. Aomine is nervous, but Kagami seems excited. He had to be put to sleep and everything, which made it feel very _serious,_ and Aomine has to wait and bum around in the hospital for several hours before he’s allowed to go in and see him in the recovery wing. 

Aomine doesn’t know much about the procedure, doesn’t want to think about what’s being done, _knives, blood, what could go wrong, facial reconstruction, fuck—_ What he does know is that they’d grafted some skin and used it to help smooth out Kagami’s cheek again. They’d opened the stitches, tried to do a better job by compensating for the lost flesh with the skin grafts, rather than just sealing the cut, so that once Kagami healed, the scar tissue wouldn’t unnaturally tug and twist the side of his mouth anymore.

In the following days, when Kagami started to remove the bandages and clean his face in the bathroom, Aomine got some peeks of how he’d turned out, monitoring the healing process over the course of days. His cheek is _really_ alarmingly red and still kind of messed up looking, but he’s clearly much better already.

He obviously feels better too.

Aomine doesn’t know what he feels about elective surgery, but he knows now how damaging a scar to the face can be to one's self-esteem — Kagami still goes back every couple days for more laser-resurfacing, slowly reducing the scarring and fixing his fucked up nerves — so he thinks that if it does that much to get Kagami’s self-esteem back to where it should be, it has to be okay.

Kagami’s much more himself. He was downright cheerful that morning. He’d even grabbed a passing handful of Aomine’s dick when he came out for his coffee. Aomine can’t find it in him to be annoyed.

“It’s only a few days and it's still better than I ever thought it would be,” Kagami notes, checking himself in the mirror, throwing the bandage out. Aomine stands next to him, peering close.

The scar on his lip is a lot less noticeable, and they’d largely left the one near his brow alone. His cheek is miles better. Kagami has bumps still, and redness. He has marks there, but that huge craggy dip that would tell you flesh had been ripped off, that gouge mark where the worst bite had been, that's smoothed out. The stitches are smaller, lined in a neat row, just enough to cinch the tears and not stretch his face out of position.

“Yeah, me too.” If Aomine’s honest, it sort of looked like Kagami had just had acne scars when he was younger, but a lot of people had those. Even if in the worst case scenario it never got any better than it was right now, there'd already been so much improvement — and it's only been like _a_ _week_ so far. Kagami's healing still has a ways to go and he's already come this far.

Kagami smiles slowly, cheek stretching naturally. He looks like he always does, shines like a star. “Yosha!” He beams at his reflection, reaching up to touch his cheek, run over the stitches.

He looks over at him, out of reflex at first, an instinctive need to share that joy with him — but his smile fades a little a moment later. He looks at Aomine with shy eyes. Like he’s still not entirely sure Aomine’s on board with him, that Aomine will touch him, look at him without holding back—

This tiny doubt whether he still loves him the same. Something he can’t voice, something that Aomine can only see through the glow in his eyes.

Scabs. Flushed skin. Hesitance. _Your light is too dim—_ He doesn’t reach out. _When two lights meet, it can only grow stronger._

  
Aomine smiles.

    Soft-hearted as ever. That’s Kagami.  
  


He lifts a knuckle to feel Kagami’s cheek, runs it over the skin, careful not to press too hard, because he’s still got to be pretty sore — it’s softer than he’d expected. “Looks good,” he murmurs, low and pleased.

He leaned in, presses their mouths together, and Kagami kisses him back immediately, relaxing all over. His spine straightens, he holds up his head, his hand comes to the back of Aomine’s neck.

And that’s when it really hits him, the reason Kagami thinks it’s worth it to spoil him and not get anything in return. _This_ is what he gets.  This. Them together, kissing in the bathroom, smiling and rubbing noses.

In the end, this is all Kagami has ever wanted. This is what he’d come back to Japan for. He’d never asked Aomine for anything more than this. It’s all he wants. It’s clearly such a small request.

Aomine worms his toes on top of Kagami’s, runs his palm across his face, cups his head in his hands and kisses him again. Kagami hums a laugh, and when they break apart breathlessly, his eyes are glowing like stars.

They both simultaneously blurt out:  _“Wanna’ cook with me?”   “Can I help with—”_ They both close their mouths at the same time and stare at each other.

Kagami laughs, that rare look on his face when Aomine has managed to charm him. He follows Kagami to the kitchen merrily, reaches out and squeezes his butt a little, and Kagami doesn’t even kick him.

The two of them make burgers together. Kagami teaches him and lets him help cook their dinner. Aomine cuts the vegetables, and lets Kagami instruct him on shaping and seasoning the meat patties. Kagami cooks the burgers, and they assemble the food on plates.

The spend a happy evening together and collapse into bed. Aomine hugs Kagami and kisses his face, snuggles into him and kisses his cheek, his neck. Kagami’s laughing, he’s letting Aomine manhandle him, roll on top of him.

They toss around and touch and kiss, slowly removing their clothes, warm and relaxed. They haven't had hardly any intimacy at all since before it happened, other than a little kissing. He's missed Kagami so much, not even just this, but being able to talk to him, touch him at all, be with him. Foreheads brushing, legs laced together, they lock eyes, and he can’t look away. His hand lost in the darkness, Kagami falling into the pit — _Hold onto her. Don't let her go.  
_

 _‘I won’t— I won’t.’_ Aomine laces their hands.  
  


They make love. All through the night they make love to each other, over and over.

It’s usual for his mind to wander a little during sex, but this one thing keeps coming back to him. Kagami on the court, an official NBA court in America. Floors that shine, hoops with glass backboards, massive sets of bleachers — Kagami with a jersey on with his name on the back. His mouth guard is in. He’s got those compression pants on his legs, thick and powerful and strained to run.

Birds on the roof, flying away. Kagami leaping in the air from the free-throw line and he doesn’t fall, just soars over the pit, he keeps climbing like he’s sprouted wings from his back. He slams the ball through the net, dunking it, and then he grabs the rim. He still doesn’t fall, hanging there from it, holds himself up and swings. Then he lets go with a crack and the hoop snaps back into shape and his shoes hit the floor with a heavy slam.  
  


And he puts his fists up.  
  


And he looks into the stands.  
  


Aomine takes him by both cheeks and kisses him as they move together. “Taiga,” he breathes. Too intimate, too close, but he doesn’t turn away, doesn’t look away, stares into his eyes, his lovely face. He rests there deep inside him, holds his head. Kagami’s crawled inside his soul, taken hold of his heart and started dribbling—

They meet at the side of the court as the crowd screams and Kagami’s elated team jostles and shoves them around, and they kiss in front of the whole world.

He looks at Kagami splayed out there beneath him, chest fluttering as they come down from that unbelievable high.

Aomine’s in love. He’s got a wonderful boyfriend. He’d fallen in love with the person who’d dragged him out of a depression and dissatisfaction with life that he’d dealt with since middle school. Someone who’d made him excited to do his favorite thing again. He’d been in a pit that he couldn’t drag himself out of, but Kagami had appeared there at the top — there to save him.

Someone who made basketball into something he loved again, rather than a hollow pain. The person he’d fly across the world to be with. The one he’d spent a California summer with. They’d walked along the beach, they’d owned the courts and drank beers late into the night, they’d lost their virginities together.

Kagami’s the only person he’s ever loved. He can’t imagine being with anyone else. At the end of the day, it’s always been him.

Kagami’s afraid of ghosts. He cooks like an angel. He likes surfing. He stuffs his face with cheeseburgers like the chubby American that he is — _eat well, play well —_ Meteor Jam, popular with the girls, only child, likes to clean his apartment in an apron and slippers — _I’ll take you on anytime —_ a highschooler who lives alone, crams the freezer with gyoza and takes calls from his rich father in America — _I don’t mind entertaining you as long as you can handle it —_ he kept the fucking shoes he gave him, the rival he’s searched for, Direct Drive Zone, the man who led him to the door, made him believe he could open that door again — _You’re the best, Kagami —_ He loves him. He loves him so much that he hurts with it — _I love you more than basketball.  
_

He’s never loved anyone as much as he loves Kagami.

It’s something he can’t let go of. It’s this thing that grabs hold of his heart and sinks in its teeth. The black pit he can’t outrun, the bubble that won’t pop. A love he can’t escape.  
  


     And suddenly, he's not afraid anymore.  
  


“Kagami,” he whispers, after they’ve laid there for a time in silence, when he thinks Kagami has to be almost asleep.

Lying across from him, legs entwined with his, Kagami opens his eyes. “Let’s go back to LA,” he says, calm and convicted. “You and me.”

“. . .” Kagami looks at him in silence, that same crease coming into his brow.

“And this time when we’re there, let’s stay.”

“Why do we have to stay,” Kagami rasps. There’s something almost like fear in his voice, a lack of understanding, but Aomine’s not going to swerve. Not this time.  “Aomine, our jobs are here,” he murmurs. “Our friends.”

“Because…” And he finally says it, feels his throat close up and still manages to get out the words. Finally. “It’s different in America, isn’t it,” he breathes, eyes flicking up to Kagami’s.

“I mean… we can be together openly. As long as we’re there, that means I can be proud about you.”  He can be a boyfriend Kagami’s proud to call his own. He can be the man Kagami’s always deserved.

After looking across at Aomine in silence, eyes clouded by sleep and confusion, his brow creases. Worry, always worried about him, that’s Kagami, sweet as a peach — “Is this because our friends don’t know?” he wonders. “I’m positive most of them do.”

_‘But they don’t say anything. They turn away from it. Because if they face it, they’ll reject us.’  
_

“I can’t hold your hand in the street. Or tell my parents the truth about us,” and it hurts but it feels good, like that distant achy tooth novocaine buzz. It feels good, finally being able to say this to Kagami, to vent that pain, to stare it in the face, this thing they’ve both suffered for, this thing that has done so much damage.

“They have to know by now.”

“They don’t know officially,” Aomine breathes, setting his jaw, looking into Kagami’s eyes, open and glowing with care. Because Kagami’s always been willing to throw things away, to fall on his sword for Aomine. He’s always been willing to live in the cage. But Aomine’s not — and Kagami shouldn’t have to either.

“Over there, it’s different,” he whispers. “Isn’t it.”

“What, and you think we can be _out_ over there?” Kagami’s brow is clenched, something in his face telling Aomine to let it go, to just keep going, power through, because the grass is always greener on the other side, but once you get there—

“I’ll kiss you on TV over there,” Aomine swore.  “I’ll kiss you at halftime when they send out the cheerleaders, I’ll kiss you on the goddamn court after the buzzer, I don’t give a shit,” he breathes, staring Kagami in the face. “I’ll tell the world. As long as we’re there.”

“That’s not how it works,” Kagami tries. “What about the NBA,” he murmured, voice heartbreakingly tender. “It’s not as accepting as you think.”

“What about Jason Collins.”

“Daiki,” he breathes, shutting his eyes.

But it just makes him more determined, wants to make Kagami want better. Wants to make Kagami realize that this doesn’t have to be a ridiculous far-off dream, doesn’t have to be harder than it is. Life can be good. Life can be easy. They can be together — because he _loves him,_ and everything else doesn’t matter.

“I want to go back because—” he tries to explain, “as long as we’re there—”

“You don’t have to prove anything to me,” Kagami blurts, a hand at Aomine’s cheek. “Just because no one else knows, it doesn’t matter. We know where we stand, we know how we feel about each other, you don’t have to prove anything, so whatever this is—”  
  


_Don’t let her go. I hope you’re buying her flowers._

_When are you gonna’ make that girl your wife?_

  
_How can you think twice about it?_

 

  
“—if we wanted, we can get married.”

 

Kagami’s almost panicked attempts to talk him down go abruptly silent, and he stares at him speechlessly. “...”

“As long as we stay there, we get to be married,” he says, breathless. “And when we’re here — we can’t. I’m not even your boyfriend when we’re here. We’re not anything.”

It’s a black pit. It’s the lonely empty court from middle school, the black monster ripping and pulling him down, the cage, his parents’ disappointed eyes — something that he has lived with and coped with for so long and has ignored, something that has slowly built into a pain he feels every day. All of that and he can’t even hold Kagami’s hand.

It’s just not possible for him. Not anymore. 

“Is this what this has been about the whole time?” Kagami whispered, after a long stunned silence. 

It’s about everyone who said his girlfriend spoiled him, he should hold onto her, marry her, it’s about his friends telling him to stop fooling around being single, _you can’t count on Kagami to take care of you until old age —_    _‘Yes I can!’_ he wants to shout, he wants to tell them, _‘I will hold onto her! I’m not fooling around and I’m not gonna’ be single ever again, you fucking hear me?’_

It’s about being able to play that game of basketball forever.

“It doesn’t matter what other people think. It doesn’t matter if they know about us.” Desperately, Kagami says, “We know what we are to each other.”

“Then why not go somewhere where we can actually fucking _be that,”_ Aomine replied, shameless and stubborn.

"Aomine, we both knew what we were getting into. You can't run away from your problems. People are jerks all over the world, and being really far away from everyone that knows us isn't going to—"

"I did know what I was getting into. But I never should have fucking settled for that," Aomine says, and Kagami goes silent, staring wide-eyed. "I wanna' live in a place where I can be with you."

He put a hand to Kagami’s cheek, fondly stroking his hair and curling it behind his ear for him. Lays his palm against his cheek, heavy and firm, strokes him with his thumb. Feels breathless at the sight of his face — just look at him.

“So what about it? We gonna’ do this?” he breathes, heart pounding, the adrenaline, that rush he’s searched for, _the one he’s looked for._   

He’s opened up for the birds to pick at his flesh, a door open in his heart, a flower spread open for the insects to devour, laid down at the feet of an angel, _love me — love me, hurry. This is for you, so take it. Quick._

“Why not. C’mon and marry me, Taiga.”

A breathless laugh escapes Kagami’s unsmiling lips, his open mouth. “You fucking moron,” he manages, bringing his fist to his chin. He’s choked up.

“That’s what they say.” Kagami laughs, watery and strained.

Aomine smiles. Look at him, with his stupid handsome face screwed up like that, eyes glowing. “We can have a California wedding,” he murmurs. “And we’re gonna’ fucking play in the NBA.”

“I thought…” Kagami swallows. “I was getting worried. You’ve been so distant the last couple months that I thought—” Kagami getting nervous about his fight with Tetsu. Kagami blowing up about him wanting to break up. Kagami pulling away from him after the attack, avoiding his gaze.

Aomine reaches out and takes him in his arms. He hugs him. Kagami’s arms come around him in return, his forehead bowing down onto his shoulder.

"Are we brave enough for this?" he hears Kagami breathe, so quiet and uncertain. Aomine hums to him a little bit, still squeezing against him. "... Not everyone's going to accept us. We're going to lose people. Going to L.A. won't change that. Can we... Can we even survive what that'll do to us?"

A man torn apart by dogs, a man dangling over a bottomless pit, plunging into the abyss. 

All this time, Kagami's been standing with his back straight, eyes glowing, never sheds a tear, never turns his face away in shame. He's always been brave enough, strong enough to call Aomine his own. Aomine's the one who's lived in fear of that pit, feared the beasts snapping at his ankles, and Kagami's the one who's been waiting, who's slowed and tried to help him stand back up.

"I'm ready," Aomine says. "Whatever happens now, I'm ready for it, as long as I've got you. I'm not scared of anything else anymore." Kagami lets out this incredulous huff of laughter that might be a sob. Aomine holds him tight, mouth nestled into his hair.

"I... I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm sorry it took me this long to get over myself."

At length, after almost a minute of silence, Kagami sniffs and murmurs into his hair, “Let’s get married in the summer.” Aomine opens his eyes, heart bouncing like a basketball. “Next year. Once we’re both on a team.”

Birds on the roof. Tokyo springtime. The feeling of laughing until it turns to weeping.

“That better not be a bluff,” Aomine said breathily, pulling back enough to look Kagami in his face, soft smile, wet lashes and all. “Cause once I get a ring on your finger, you’re never fucking taking it off.”  
  


“Except for basketball,” they say in unison.

    Kagami’s laughing.  
  


The words are there that they don’t say — _Taiga, Taiga, Taiga, I love you, I love you, I love you—_ but this time, he does say it. Says it and says it all through the night.

 

    At the feet of an angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here in Paris rain is falling; my heart belongs to Brooklyn
> 
> — Woodkid


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for your kindness and support. [[added an extra bit at the end thanks to sam]]

     All that's left to do is to tell everybody.

 

Aomine can't face his parents yet. He still just can't do it. The thought of it is paralyzing, and he doesn't know if he's ever going to be ready to see the looks on their faces when he says it. Kagami doesn't push him on it, but of course, they're leaving the country to get married, so it's not like they're not going to notice something's up. He's gotta' tell his mom and dad  _something_ _._

He'd decided on telling them that he's moving back for another shot at the NBA. Then once he and Kagami are settled and are sending out wedding invitations next summer, he’ll send his parents one — and he'll just hope they show up. Or call. Or text. Tell him that they still love him. Tell him that he's still their son.

And if they don't do that, he hopes he doesn't hear from them again. He hopes that if they're upset, that he hears nothing. He doesn’t want to fight about it, doesn't want to know what they'll say. To be honest, he’s just not strong enough yet to tell them face to face, and that's why — he doesn't have it in him yet to bear that rejection.

 

But everyone else, their friends, they're going to come out to them in person.

 

It's time — they’re all here and they’re going to tell them today. Kagami’s insisted that they at least do this much, even though Aomine would have rather just fucked off to America without saying a word. It’s nerve-wracking. He knew it was all going to be worth it no matter what happened, because however bad their reactions turn out to be, he's still got Kagami with him. He knows that, but there’s cold sweat all down his back. He’s gonna' have to make himself do it, one moment of bravery, one moment of showing off Kagami with pride.

They’re all sitting over there at the picnic bench, finally having shut up asking about what happened to Kagami’s face and are waiting to hear what they’ve gathered them to announce — but Tetsu is standing by their side. He hadn’t expected him to do that, and Aomine can almost hear the unspoken words, as usual when people don’t notice his presence, _“I’ve been here the whole time—”_

He feels his throat close up. _‘Tetsu…’  
_

And the thing is, Kagami knew. Kagami must have known. He must have known the price of being with Aomine from the beginning. He’d known that by coming back to Japan to be with him, it would be painful. That they would be a secret from the world. That there would always be distance between them. He wouldn’t be able to hold him or kiss him or tell another living soul — can’t call each other _baby,_ can’t buy flowers, can’t say _I love you,_ because it would only make things harder.

Kagami had known that. He wouldn’t get to play in the NBA. He wouldn’t get to live openly. He’d known, and he’d still shouldered that burden. He’d still done it, and had taken only a moment to make up his mind.

He gave up so much for him. He's sacrificed so much for this relationship, he's worked so hard.

But that’s who Kagami is.  Kagami goes into the burning building. Kagami steps in front of the dog. Flies back to Japan. Leaps over the pit. Puts out his hand. Laughs. Slamdunks.

Kagami throws himself into everything with his full passion, puts his heart into it — so even when it’s impossible, even when it’s daunting, so scary that it seems he can’t go forward, so painful that it feels his back will break, his heart will burst, he doesn’t yield no matter the price.  Because he believes that what he’s fighting for is worth it.

Look at the way he’s standing there, chin up, shoulders back, jaw sharp and proud. Any glow of nervousness in his eyes is stubbornly beaten back with sheer determination, defiance. His back is straight. A war survivor.

 

  Hangs from the rim.   Fists up. The crowd screams.  
  


     He had to love Aomine with all his heart.

 

“Me and Aomine,” Kagami begins, and his voice doesn’t even waver. Maybe some of it could be chalked up to living in America where it wasn’t as looked down upon, so he didn’t harbor that internalized guilt and shame as badly as Aomine did — but it shouldn’t make it easier, shouldn’t make it any less scary to stand in front of one’s friends and open oneself up for rejection. He’s so brave.

“We’re going to America.”

“Why are you going back?!” is the most immediate question. “NBA?” they guess. Aomine stands there, rooted to the spot, unable to pick out individual voices.

“That,” Kagami notes, “and…” He slows down then at the hard part, puts his hand up to his hair and scratches. “I know we haven’t told you all before, but—”

Satsuki’s eyes shine. Kise starts to light up. Tetsu’s at their side, quiet and loyal.  


Aomine looks up as the seconds tick by, the silence stretching, his heart pounding hard —and he watches as the words get stuck in Kagami’s throat.  
  


It's funny how you can make up your mind to do something and be completely resolved, but when it comes time, you can still feel yourself trembling. He'd already expected to have a hard time, but he'd thought Kagami would breeze through it — coming out must just be one of those things. It's like opening yourself up for every single person you know to decide whether to reject you or to keep on loving you, and for the first time in Aomine's life, he sees Kagami choke.

But for him, the bubble pops. Because all of a sudden, Aomine’s not afraid anymore. Because he loves Kagami with all his heart too. Because if he’s lost everything, he still has Kagami — and Tetsu.  
  


And he’s not afraid of what happens otherwise.  
 

“We’re engaged,” he hears himself say, his brain taking a second to catch up with what’s happened, but he doesn’t retreat. “We’re getting married next summer.”

Kise and Satsuki gasp aloud. They all stare. Kagami looks at him in surprise, and he can see that he’s nervous too, but he falls in step with him, following up after a few beats of silence, “So who’s coming to the wedding?”

Fuck, it’s awkward. It’s a lot to drop on people at once, considering they’d never so much as told them that they’re gay, never disclosed that they’re in a relationship, have been for years, and then suddenly tell them they’re getting married. He realizes then that they must have had their suspicions, because none of them blow it off as a joke.

Some of them are clearly uncomfortable, he can see that, the way their jaws tighten and their eyes twitch. They won’t look at them, they don’t know what to say. Midorima, Murasakibara, Akashi, they’re all silent, uneasy, unreadable.

He looks at Satsuki and sees that her hands are over her mouth, eyes wide as plates. Aomine swallows hard and puts his foot back, heart jerking.

Kagami is holding his hand. He looks down, sees Kagami’s fingers closing around his hand, right in front of all of them, firm and unashamed. Aomine closes his eyes and inhales through his nose.  
  


“It is rude not to respond to questions,” Tetsu remarks firmly, nearly making them both do an air spittake, having forgotten he was there for a second — plus it’s not like him to sound so harsh.  
  


_‘Yeah!’_ he thinks a second later, indignant. Where do they get off just sitting there without saying shit?   _‘Yeah he’s right!’_ Aomine straightens his back, squeezing Kagami’s hand in return.

He squeezes Kagami’s hand in front of all his friends and looks at the people walking past them, the way they stare and then quickly look away, but he just holds on tighter — _‘I’m not letting go. I’m never letting go again.’  
_

“Congratulations,” Midorima is the first to offer, stiff and formal, after clearing his throat and adjusting his glasses. Aomine blinks, heart pounding in his throat. Kagami squeezes so hard that it hurts. “Oha-asa had forecasted a prosperous union this morning for Virgos, but I could not have anticipated this.”

Aomine stares for a beat or two, and it takes him a while to realize what that was — Midorima’s awkward way of giving a symbolic thumbs-up.

Murasakibara seems uneasy, but asks about the food they’re going to serve at the after-party, ultimately unconcerned with the rest. Akashi still says nothing, but Aomine can already feel this thing inside him loosening.  
  


“Akashi-kun?” Tetsu challenges, and the guy actually squirms a little.  
  


“It’s a shame you can’t have the wedding here. I would have hosted,” he muttered begrudgingly, and Aomine can hear some resentment there, but they can work on that.

Kise finally _bursts_ after the word ‘wedding,’ a vibrating yellow blur — “Are you going to have the ceremony on the beach?” — “Why haven’t you said anything before?!” — “Whose name are you going to take?”

“Why not just be the _basuke-baka_ household,” Murasakibara mumbles.

“Can you two even afford rings on your wages?”

“Sheesh, you guys, chill out,” Kagami tries, a little cowed, because neither of them have really thought ahead that far to figuring out any details. It hadn’t really mattered so much. It’s knowing that they’ve made up their minds to do it that’s the important part.  
  
He should be able to relax by now, with at least one of them having shown an excited reaction and _none_ of them reacting with open hostility. He should be able to rest easy, but there’s one more to go—  
  


“Whaddaya say, Satsuki,” Aomine tries, breathless, because she might be the one he wants approval from the most. “Gonna’ take me down the aisle?”

   
Satsuki almost cries. Kise does.  
  


The two of them slowly release hands and smile at each other, slow and shaky — and for the first time, it doesn’t feel so hard. The weight of the world is gone off his shoulders. The door is open in his heart. The pit closes beneath him as he is dragged out. He feels free.

He felt so much _relief_ that he might throw up — because suddenly, life seemed okay again. Life was simple, and good, and easy.

Aomine opens his mouth, ready to mutter out an awkward, _‘thanks guys,’_ but Kagami puts a hand to his neck and kisses him full on the mouth, right there in front of everyone.

It’s kind of awkward, because he can feel a few of them cringing in disgust, averting their eyes, but Kise bawls and Satsuki squeals, running up and hugging them, worming between them. They both look down at her as they break apart, laughing a little. Aomine slings an arm around her and noogies her.

He can tell they’re not all pleased, but they don’t have to be pleased. They just have to accept them. They’ll have time to get used to the idea. What are friends for.

And Kagami is there — a year and a half in America, another shot at an NBA career, and then they’ll be married. Life stretches out ahead of him, an endless California summer.

 

His heart is like a ball on the court.

 

When it takes longer than was socially acceptable for their friends to thaw after they had kissed in front of them, Tetsu suggests that at their wedding reception, instead of a first dance, Kagami-kun and Aomine-kun should play a one-on-one.    


“You know, in your tuxedos.”  

 

      That rustles up a bit more enthusiasm.

 

. . .  


On the way home, they keep holding hands, tentatively lacing their fingers. They're as sweaty-palmed and nervous as a new teenage couple as they make their way through the afternoon rush of foot traffic, but being ignored to their faces and stared at by strangers when they think they can't see isn't so bad. Not bad enough that it's worth letting go of each other.

Aomine can't think why it took him so long to get up enough courage for this. 

He stops by the corner store and lets Kagami wait outside — and when he comes back out, the way Kagami's face turns pink and lights up in joy, eyes shining like stars... Just look at him. He's beautiful like that.  
  
"Wanna' go out on a date tonight? Taiga?"

All the years of waiting and hiding, the way love just beams out of Kagami's face in that moment makes everything worth it.   
  


     Scratching the back of his neck with a crooked smile, Aomine holds out a rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> California, here we come.  
> Right back where we started from.
> 
> On the stereo, listen as we go.  
>  _Nothing's gonna' stop me now._
> 
> —Phantom Planet
> 
> __  
>    
> 


End file.
